House Panel to Call for End to Patronage in Filling Jobs

Stung by public reaction to the House bank scandal, a bipartisan congressional task force has agreed in principle to abolish the age-old patronage system used for filling thousands of jobs on Capitol Hill, a leading Democratic member said Thursday.

Under the accord tentatively reached by the 16-member panel, jobs for Capitol Hill doorkeepers, clerks, pages, elevator operators, post office workers and others would no longer be filled by congressmen with whomever they chose--in many cases, their own relatives and friends.

Instead, the positions, approaching 5,000 in number, would be filled through some form of merit system, a task force source said. Still exempt from the reform would be staff of the members’ offices or committees.

The panel, headed by Speaker Thomas S. Foley and House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), is composed of eight Democrats and eight Republicans. It can only make recommendations on reforming the House’s management, but the intensity of the current House scandal will make anything the panel recommends politically impossible to resist, House leaders agree.

That members would consider giving up one of their most prized powers--the ability to put their spouses, children and friends on the payroll--reflects the desperation on Capitol Hill to escape the scandal, which is spreading on two fronts.

While scores of congressmen stand accused of writing bad checks against their House bank accounts, evidence mounts of irregularities at the House post office, allegedly involving the exchange of stamps for cash, embezzlement and cocaine sales.

As the House moved toward a nonpartisan policy on hiring support staff, the Republican and Democratic congressional campaign committees served notice they would try to take advantage of the bank scandal for their own partisan purposes in an election year.

Both groups unveiled attack ads aimed at exploiting the issue. While the Republican ad blames the scandal on 38 years of Democratic leadership in the House, the Democrats’ ad emphasizes that Republicans, including members of President Bush’s Cabinet, also wrote bad checks.

And in a related development, Foley defended his wife and unpaid chief of staff, Heather, and released a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office saying that she was not a target of a grand jury investigation of the House post office. Heather Foley has testified in the grand jury inquiry into the irregularities at the House postal facilities.

Foley, who has been a key target of criticism for failing to curb abuses by former Sergeant-at-Arms Jack Russ, who ran the House bank, declared that he has felt “absolutely” no pressure to step down from his post.

He has, however, thrown his support to long-dormant proposals to overhaul the day-to-day operations of the House and its committee system in hopes of reducing public anger at Congress.

If both Democrats and Republicans go through with tentative commitments to scrap the system of political appointments, it would mark a historic milestone in congressional reform. But some rank-and-file members may put up a fight to keep their privileges of naming supporters and even family members to House jobs.

“This is an institution in transition,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), a member of the panel and vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus. “There’s absolutely no interest in the perpetuation of patronage. . . . There’s no desire on the part of the Democratic leadership to have a partisan approach on the day-to-day routine of running the House.”

House Republicans, who have been in a minority for all but four years since the end of World War II, long have advocated the elimination of patronage appointments to jobs that have no consequences for policy.

One GOP source said the Democrats agreed to produce a reform plan next week at the second meeting of the task force.

Recommendations of such a high-powered group were expected to win easy approval in the House, where demands for a more business-like management have reached a crescendo.

A Republican member of the panel, who asked not to be identified, said GOP leaders would be willing to go along with a Democratic proposal to drop the patronage system and replace it with hiring and promotion based on merit rather than political loyalties.

“When an institution stumbles as much as this one has, it hurts every member,” the GOP source said. “As a result, in a short time frame, dramatic changes can take place.”

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), who is not a member of the panel but holds the ranking Republican post on the House Administration Committee, supported a move for a patronage-free House.

“The place needs to be changed,” Thomas said. “The leadership must have the courage to take the time and do it right.”

The patronage system, Thomas added, no longer is capable of providing the more highly skilled workers the House post office needs to operate its new computers.

At its first meeting, the special task force discussed how to give both the majority Democrats and the minority Republicans a significant voice in the selection of a new House administrator and a new chief financial officer.

Once professional management has been established, both sides assumed, the traditional House patronage system would be phased out and support-staff employees hired on their qualifications, not their political ties.

Staff aides on House committees would continue to be hired on a partisan basis because they help to shape legislative policy. Personal staffs of members of Congress also could be chosen on a political basis, just as they are now.