Overhaul of Federal Appointments System Urged

The rising number of presidential appointments and increasing turnover have brought “a plague on contemporary government,” a federal panel warned Monday as it recommended overhauling the appointments system.

Because of these changes, the system’s ability to meet the staffing needs of the executive branch is “seriously in doubt,” the National Academy of Public Administration declared in reporting the findings of a two-year study.

It advocated a series of reforms, among them the speeding up of Senate confirmation hearings and a legislative ban on appointees’ discussion of future employment in the private sector.

The report, entitled “Leadership in Jeopardy,” painted a bleak picture of the state of presidential appointments. G. Calvin Mackenzie, director of the Presidential Appointee Project, said at a news conference that the system is “in distress--and it is getting worse.”

Mackenzie, a vice president at Colby College in Waterville, Me., added: “Vacancies are common in senior administrative posts, good people are hard to attract to fill them and appointees often leave the government before they have accomplished their objectives--or the President’s.”

Survey of Appointees

The academy, a congressionally chartered, nonpartisan organization, surveyed hundreds of presidential appointees in the Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Reagan administrations. It made 23 recommendations for changing the selection process, simplifying financial-disclosure requirements and Senate confirmations, improving working environments and doing more to orient new employees.

‘Has Grown Too Large’

The report said that the number of appointed positions “has grown too large and must be reduced.” However, academy officials said they could not provide numbers to illustrate the increases because different administrations used different systems to count appointees, and thus could not be compared.

In general, they said, the growth has resulted largely from expansion of government programs and “deeper penetration” of appointments within agencies, such as increased numbers of assistant secretaries and undersecretaries.

To prevent confirmation delays, which recently have lasted as long as a year, the panel recommended restricting to five working days the time a senator could hold up a presidential appointment.

It recommended that all presidential appointees “with genuine financial need” should be provided up to one fourth of their annual salary in severance pay “to afford them a period of transition out of the federal government” and to help prevent them from shopping for jobs while in office.

The academy also suggested paying a bonus of 10% of an appointee’s salary if he remained in his position for more than three years.

Among its other recommendations, the academy urged that more reliance be placed on substantive policy knowledge and administrative experience than on political connections. And it suggested that, to avoid gaps in leadership, planning for the staffing of new administrations should begin no later than the month in which major-party candidates are nominated.