Senate OKs Letting U.S. Employees Be in Politics

The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would permit most federal employees to participate in partisan politics for the first time in more than 50 years.

Disregarding warnings by some Republicans that the legislation could bring politics into the nation’s civil service, the Senate voted, 68 to 31, to reform the 1939 Hatch Act that bars federal workers from engaging in political activities.

Under the changes approved by the Senate, federal workers would still be barred from running for elective office or from campaigning on behalf of a candidate or a political party while on duty. But, with certain exceptions, the current rules would be relaxed to allow civil servants to hold office in a political party and to engage in campaign activities as private citizens during their off-duty hours.

“Right now, 3 million taxpaying Americans are denied their basic constitutional rights because of the outdated Hatch Act . . ,” said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), the bill’s chief sponsor. “With today’s vote, the Senate takes an important step toward reforming what has become a terribly unfair, undemocratic and confusing situation.”

By its vote, the Senate also completed action on the last of three Democratic initiatives aimed at reforming the nation’s election laws. All three are revised versions of legislation vetoed in the past by Republican presidents.

One initiative, the so-called Motor-Voter Act, provides that voter registration services be made available at welfare offices and motor vehicle bureaus. It was passed and signed into law by President Clinton over Republican protests earlier this year. Campaign finance reform, the most difficult and controversial of the initiatives, has also been passed by the Senate and awaits action in the House.

Senate passage of the Hatch Act revisions assures that they will be enacted later this year, although they must still be reconciled with a substantially different bill already approved by the House.

While most Senate Republicans still refused to go along, a bipartisan compromise negotiated last week dissolved enough of the GOP opposition to avert a threatened filibuster and assure passage of the revisions. Thirteen Republicans bolted party ranks to join 55 Democrats in voting for the changes. Only one Democrat, Oklahoma conservative David L. Boren, went the other way, joining 30 Republicans in voting against the measure.

Under the compromise, civil servants in sensitive or certain high-level jobs still would be bound by all the current restrictions of the Hatch Act, which was enacted in the wake of a 1939 scandal in which federal workers were coerced into contributing to a senator’s campaign fund.

About 85,000 federal employees--most of them in law enforcement or national security agencies such as the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and the National Security Council--would still be bound by the existing rules. In an amendment adopted shortly before the bill was passed, the Senate also approved a Republican proposal to add employees of the Justice Department’s criminal division to the list of exceptions.