U.S. Workers Put ‘On Shelf’ Paid to Be Idle Under Unwritten Rules

Public Health Service physician James D. Felsen starts each day with a cup of coffee. Then he reads a newspaper, checks his mail and telephones friends.

Felsen saves his coffee cups, because they help him keep track of how many days he has gone to his office in the huge federal Parklawn Building in Rockville, Md. He has constructed an arch from the used Styrofoam cups. The first row stretches from the floor on one side, up to the ceiling, and down to the floor on the opposite side. He is halfway through a second row.

For all this, the government pays him $117,000 annually, in taxpayer dollars, including a $15,000 bonus theoretically reserved for valued employees. Felsen’s coffee cup construction is about all he has to show for the last three years, during which, he says, he has done “virtually nothing.”

Felsen, in the code words of the bureaucracy, has been put “on the shelf.” He has been sent to the “turkey farm.”

The phenomenon is not new, but almost never discussed openly in the government. For years, the bureaucracy has banished employees to out-of-the-way corners or sent them on lengthy “training” assignments because they ran afoul of management, were poor performers, or blew the whistle and embarrassed their agency.

Felsen was put on the shelf after sharp disagreements with his bosses over his management of a Public Health Service program. The disagreements escalated into charges and countercharges.

The case underscores how arcane, cumbersome federal personnel rules leave agencies unable to hold employees or supervisors accountable for their actions and decisions. Investigations are started and stopped, consultants are hired to review operations and write reports, conflicting information is gathered and distributed, but the evidence to back up a decision proves elusive. Taxpayers pay the costs.

Felsen ran into trouble in 1992, when the Health and Human Services Department inspector general received an anonymous complaint that went to the Public Health Service for investigation. By March 1993, Felsen and two aides were removed from their jobs.

Felsen, a 29-year veteran of the service’s Commissioned Corps, contends that the agency never proved any charges--such as misuse of official time or conducting personal business at his desk--and he was punished because he opposed agency efforts to take away program money.

Three years later, the case seems to have less to do with the original allegations than with the feeling that too many bridges have been burned and neither side can turn back. Some officials describe Felsen as a recalcitrant employee who makes unreasonable demands and has resisted efforts to find or accept new assignments.

Still, even as feelings hardened between Felsen and health service officials, he was given the title of “senior medical consultant” to the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Legislation (OPEL) in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the Public Health Service. He was allowed to volunteer for meetings of the American Medical Assn. and serve on AMA panels as a government representative.

He sought and received the annual $15,000 “retention bonus” for employees the Public Health Service does not want to lose to the private sector. The agency renewed Felsen’s bonus package last year, even though his supervisor, Ronald H. Carlson, filed a memo opposing it.

In another memo, which Felsen provided, Carlson attached the following observations to his 1994-1995 “effectiveness report,” an annual job evaluation:

“I believe Dr. Felsen should be reassigned to another post. . . . Unfortunately, nothing has been worked out, even though I have tried on numerous occasions to do so. While there has not been any disruptedness because of this assignment, neither has there been any work performed for OPEL and the HRSA during the past year.”

John Mahoney, the deputy administrator at HRSA, agreed. “Clearly, the situation has festered and festered too long,” Mahoney said. “Clearly, in retrospect, it should not have been allowed to fester and more aggressive action is necessary.”

Agency officials acted in “good faith” toward Felsen, he said. “There were numerous attempts to find a suitable job for Dr. Felsen, and they haven’t been successful.”

Mahoney said the agency is “exploring a full range of actions,” from renewed efforts to find Felsen an acceptable assignment to ordering him to retire.

Asked about paying a bonus to a person who does “virtually nothing,” Mahoney replied, “In retrospect, the fact that he got the retention bonus was a mistake.”

At the time the feud started, Felsen directed HRSA’s federal occupational health division, then a $60-million-a-year enterprise that provided other government agencies, for a fee, such services as first-aid clinics, fitness counseling, industrial hygiene services and testing for illegal drugs.

Felsen, 54, says his case is emblematic of larger policy and personnel issues with the Public Health Service. A recent GAO report said taxpayers could save up to $130 million a year if the agency’s programs were carried out by rank-and-file federal workers rather than members of the Commissioned Corps.

The Commissioned Corps provides medical care to Native Americans, health care in federal prisons and conducts health sciences research. Corps officers receive virtually the same pay and benefits as the military, and report to the U.S. surgeon general. But when assigned to Public Health Service agencies, such as HRSA, officers often report to civil service administrators.