A Presidential Civil Service: FDR's Liaison Office for Personnel Management
264
A Presidential Civil Service: FDR's Liaison Office for Personnel Management
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Overview
A Presidential Civil Service offers a comprehensive and definitive study of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Liaison Office for Personnel Management (LOPM). Established in 1939 following the release of Roosevelt’s Brownlow Committee report, LOPM became a key milestone in the evolution of the contemporary executive-focused civil service.
The Progressive Movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries comprised groups across the political spectrum with quite different. All, however, agreed on the need for a politically autonomous and independent federal Civil Service Commission (CSC) to eliminate patronage and political favoritism. In A Presidential Civil Service, public administration scholar Mordecai Lee explores two models open to later reformers: continuing a merit-based system isolated from politics or a management-based system subordinated to the executive and grounded in the growing field of managerial science.
Roosevelt’s 1937 Brownlow Committee, formally known as the President’s Committee on Administrative Management, has been widely studied including its recommendation to disband the CSC and replace it with a presidential personnel director. What has never been documented in detail was Roosevelt’s effort to implement that recommendation over the objections of Congress by establishing the LOPM as a nonstatutory agency.
The role and existence of LOPM from 1939 to 1945 has been largely dismissed in the history of public administration. Lee’s meticulously researched A Presidential Civil Service, however, persuasively shows that LOPM played a critical role in overseeing personnel policy. It was involved in every major HR initiative before and during World War II. Though small, the agency’s deft leadership almost always succeeded at impelling the CSC to follow its lead.
Roosevelt’s actions were in fact an artful and creative victory, a move finally vindicated when, in 1978, Congress abolished the CSC and replaced it with an Office of Personnel Management headed by a presidential appointee. A Presidential Civil Service offers a fascinating account and vital reassessment of the enduring legacy of Roosevelt’s LOPM.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817389451 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 05/30/2016 |
| Series: | Public Administration: Criticism and Creativity |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Presidential Civil Service
FDR'S Liaison Office for Personnel Management
By Mordecai Lee
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2016 University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8945-1
CHAPTER 1
Origins of the Idea of a Presidential Personnel Agency, 1913–1936
In the beginning, there was not much government in the US (though there was some [Mashaw 2012]). Consequently, there was less of a need for a comprehensive governmental employment system, let alone a professional personnel department in government agencies. In fact, the reason back then for the large number of local elected offices — such as county clerk, clerk of courts, register of deeds, sheriff, and treasurer — was because these were one-man departments. They had no staff. On the federal level, when Jefferson took office, the executive branch employed only 153 people at the seat of government (excluding field staff such as post office workers, customs collectors, and Indian agents). Thirty years later, the number of federal employees in Washington was still only about double that (Lee 2012b).
It was the large growth in the number of federal employees, especially after the Civil War, which led to excesses in the spoils system and gradually increasing public interest in civil service reform. But Congress and political machines in cities and states, ever hungry for patronage, were major roadblocks to any depoliticization of government employment. According to Morris, "It is difficult for Americans living in the first quarter of the twenty-first century to understand the emotions which Civil Service Reform aroused in the last quarter of the nineteenth" (Morris 2010, 404–05).
The Orthodoxy of an Independent and Apolitical Civil Service Commission
The assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed office seeker capped this popular movement. It was the seismic political event that enabled reformers to overcome such entrenched political obstacles. In 1883, Congress enacted the Pendleton Act, establishing the nonpartisan and independent Civil Service Commission (CSC) to oversee a merit-based employment system in the federal government. (Significantly, it only covered a minority of federal employees.) The popular movement for civil service reform also focused on state and local governments. The first state to enact a law creating a civil service system overseen by an independent commission was New York, due to the efforts of Democratic governor Grover Cleveland and Republican assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt (Lee 2012b). Later, Roosevelt was one of the three federal CSC commissioners who avidly investigated and exposed political violations of federal law protecting a nonpartisan and apolitical classified service (R. White 2003).
But what, exactly, was meant by injecting a merit system into public sector employment? By the 1920s, the movement for civil service reform had coagulated into orthodoxy. Several central tenets defined a "true" merit-based employment system in government. The specific goal was the employment of expert professionals who would hold permanent appointments and not be subject to political oversight. Many elements of an approved civil service system focused on attaining complete control over the management of a merit-centered workforce. There should be apolitical control over the front, middle, and end stages of the employment cycle, including recruiting, testing, certifying, promoting, evaluating, rewarding, handling grievances, disciplining, and firing.
The most prominent element of this orthodoxy was the creation of a civil service commission. This entailed multi-member body consisting of an odd number of members, with appointees representing both political parties. Most importantly, it would function as an independent (quasi- regulatory) commission, not as a department in the executive branch. It would not be accountable to the elected chief executive in the way that the secretary of a Cabinet department served at the pleasure of the president. Instead, the ideal CSC really reported to no one and was largely outside the orbit of normal public administration. It stood alone, autonomous, nonpartisan, and apolitical as the guardian and implementer of the merit system.
For example, the 1915 version of the reform movement's model civil service law stated that a civil service commission "should not be controlled by or responsible to any political officer" (National Assembly of Civil Service Commissions 1915, 5). It was to be an independent agency apart from the executive and legislative branches, essentially its own supervisor. In 1922, the Governmental Research Conference proposed some changes in the scope and operations of municipal CSCs, but emphasized the continuing principle of assuring that personnel administration would be "under professional rather than under political guidance" (Governmental Research Conference 1922, 60).
The first textbook in American public administration, published in 1926, described "a typical civil service law" as including guarantees of a CSC's political autonomy from the chief executive (L. White 1926, 231). The next year, in a summary of the state of American public administration, Willoughby noted that a principle of personnel matters "that has been almost universally adopted" included the dictate that a CSC "shall be deemed to be one standing outside of the administration and responsible primarily to the legislature or directly to the people" (Willoughby 1927, 355–56). (He disagreed with it.)
In 1931, a revised model law for cities continued to require that both political parties be represented on a three-person CSC (National Civil Service Reform League 1931a, 3). The counterpart model law for state governments required that two of the three appointees be selected from an eligibility list as a result of a civil service recruitment and examination process. These two commissioners would themselves be within the classified service with the usual civil service protections. Roberts described such an independent structure as the "instrument of reform," in other words, not merely one of several component parts of a civil service reform program, but rather the central element of it (Roberts 1996a, 16, emphasis added).
The strong preference for a multi-person independent civil service commission continued to be held as an article of faith by civil service reformers for a long time. In 1939, the National Civil Service Reform League and National Municipal League jointly issued a new model state civil service law. They acknowledged that "a few" governments now preferred a civil service structure headed by a sole administrator. But, "there is a marked tendency" for multi-member commissions with the commissioners reflecting a nonpartisan commitment to creating, maintaining, and protecting a merit system (National Civil Service Reform League and National Municipal League 1939, 8–9). A decade and a half after that, their 1953 model law only slightly revised that characterization, stating there was still "a marked tendency" for multi-member commissions, though admitting there were "many" examples of personnel departments headed by a single administrator. Nonetheless, their 1953 model law continued to prefer the traditional approach of a multi-member CSC (National Civil Service League and National Municipal League 1953, 6–7).
Questioning the Orthodoxy, 1913–1932
Civil service reform and the larger movement for good government had triggered, in turn, the gradual emergence of public administration. Somewhat akin to business administration, public administration would be several things simultaneously: a profession of practitioners, a social science–based research subject, a training program for future practitioners, and an academic discipline. The significance of this emerging field was perhaps in its different orientation from what had preceded and birthed it. Civil service reform was largely focused on a negative goal, namely of reducing government corruption, especially by abolishing patronage jobs. CSCs would be the bulwark against dirty politics, standing at the ramparts and defending good government from the hordes of nefarious politicians trying to get their grubby hands on jobs for their cronies. To the good government progressives, this was a clear cut issue of good and bad, right and wrong, that had active support from large numbers of the citizenry.
On the other hand, public administration encompassed the perspective of management and was a field of interest largely to only a few insiders, the self-selected professionals with specialized expertise. What was needed to improve the quality of government management? Given that public administration emerged after the peak of the Progressive era good-government and reform movements, the new field built on a premise growing out of its origins in a merit system now ensconced nearly universally in the American public sector. The battle for clean government had largely been won or was in the midst of being reached. A politically neutral and competent workforce was in place or coming into place through a classified system with extant CSCs as the guardians of this merit-based personnel system. Given that the merit system was here to stay, what next? Or, at least, what were the consequences of this new normal?
These early public administrationists began wondering if all the elements of a merit system were congruent with the smooth and efficient management of government. In particular, if presidents, governors, and mayors were the heads of the executive branches of their respective governmental units, could they function as executives were supposed to? Could they pursue and implement the businesslike functioning of the public sector? Perhaps the good government folks had gone too far and succeeded too much in removing executive oversight and direction over the classified service?
An early and tentative manifestation of this new thinking was raised in 1913 by President Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency. Largely a failure in actual results approved by Congress, it nonetheless debuted the voice of the new public administration profession. The commission was chaired by Frederick Cleveland, the co-founder of the trailblazing New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the "mother" organization of the field that had subsequently birthed several entities, including a training program for professionals and similar organizations in other cities. Member Frank Goodnow, a professor at Columbia, had written in 1900 a seminal book for the field, titled Politics and Administration (Goodnow 1967). As a result, some called him the "Father of Public Administration." The third major member of the commission was W. F. Willoughby, who was beginning to emerge as a major figure in the field (Lee 2011).
By early 1913, President Taft was a lame duck, having been defeated by Democrat Woodrow Wilson (with the assistance of former president Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as a third-party candidate after Taft beat him for the Republican nomination). Taft was metaphorically clearing off his desk, making one last effort to advocate congressional approval of the commission's reform and reorganization recommendations or, at least, to get into the official record his and its ideas. On January 10, Cleveland testified at a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee. The committee was most interested in the commission's recommendation for a presidential Bureau of Administrative Control. The rationale for such an organization grew out of the increasing calls by reformers for an executive budget, with a president preparing and submitting to Congress a unified annual budget proposal. (It was eventually adopted in 1921.) Besides a budgeting agency, the proposed bureau would encompass the key central managerial responsibilities for a president vested constitutionally with directing the executive branch. One entity within that administrative bureau would be a central Bureau of Personnel.
This subject did not come up in Cleveland's oral testimony or in his answers to questions, only in a memo he subsequently submitted at the request of the committee's chair. The reference to a central Bureau of Personnel was opaquely described (common to Cleveland's writing style) and quite unclear in some key details. It was buried in a section on the management practices of other countries, especially Great Britain. Cleveland wrote that, based on the UK's precedent, "the executive head should be provided with an independent organization for exercising control both over the subject of the efficiency of the personnel and over the character of the results obtained in the several departments" (US House 1913, 48).
A month later, and with only a few weeks left in his term, Taft sent a message to Congress containing a budget plan for the next fiscal year as a way of demonstrating tangibly what an executive budget would look like. An appendix summarized the changes in laws that Congress would have to approve to permit an executive budget and related central responsibilities of the president. The list of proposed statutory changes included an "amendment of the civil-service law so as to broaden its functions and give to the Executive a bureau of personnel" (US Senate 1913, 117).
These two descriptions of a central presidential personnel agency were clear as mud, perhaps deliberately so. Both said that the goal was a central personnel agency, a broader management function than that of the current CSC as guardian of the merit system. Both described the bureau as under "the executive," presumably meaning the president, but avoided saying so explicitly, let alone clarifying the accountability relationship between the personnel agency and the White House. Also, confusingly, the proposed central personnel agency was described as "an independent organization." This could have meant the traditional characterization of an autonomous CSC, but the ambiguity could have also have meant that the agency would simply not be affiliated with any Cabinet departments, hence having the generic standing of an independent agency within the executive branch. If the latter, then the new agency would be much more subject to the president's direction, more like the managerial role of a Panama Canal Commission and less like the independent regulatory and quasi-judicial role of the Interstate Commerce Commission. This 1913 idea for — apparently — a presidential personnel management agency was offered so tentatively, so opaquely, and so late politically that it was almost universally unnoticed and quickly sank out of sight.
It was nearly ten years later when other public administration leaders began promoting it anew. William Mosher suggested the need to update the agenda of civil service reform (Mosher 1921). As a member of the National Institute of Public Administration (the successor to Cleveland's Bureau of Municipal Research), Mosher suggested that the time had come for a new phase in the reform movement. The original goals of civil service reform, in his view, had been "prohibitive" in nature, and then "regulatory." Both were negative in orientation, trying to end or prevent bad things. Now was the time for a successor paradigm, that of a "constructive" approach to the broad gamut of public personnel management. Mosher called for a central personnel agency that would "become a part of rather than apart from the rest of the administration." Furthermore, there was a need for the professionalization in the staffing of such an agency, so that it could focus on employing trained experts in all manner of personnel administration, rather than clerks following rules. This was quite a radical departure from the civil service reform orthodoxy. Even so, Mosher was careful not to discuss the relationship of his central personnel agency with the chief executive, whether a president, governor, or mayor. However, his cautious description of the new agency being part of "the administration," rather than, say, "the executive branch" appears to be a deliberate reference to a president's administration, rather than to public administration generically.
The next year, Lewis Mayers of the Institute for Government Research (later the Brookings Institution, which was headed by Willoughby of the Taft Commission) suggested something similar (Mayers 1922, chap. 15). He proposed spinning off the regulatory and quasi-judicial role of the CSC into a small separate body that would hear appeals on personnel matters. The rest of the CSC would become a "central personnel administration" agency, with an affirmative role in promoting good personnel management throughout the federal executive branch. He was vague on the organization of the non-judicial agency, at one point seeming to suggest it be headed by a single commissioner (at least for all recruitment responsibilities). Mayers was apparently trying to straddle two distinct approaches, wanting a management-oriented central personnel agency while at the same time wanting it to be nonpolitical.
Paralleling these theoretical proposals was the emergence in Maryland of a single civil service commissioner, rather than a multiple-member commission (Telford 1923). This was very controversial with traditionalists because the membership could not be balanced between the two parties and because decisions would not require the agreement of at least two people. Furthermore, a one-person commission looked a lot like a department head, blurring the distinction between an independent commission and a state agency head reporting to the governor.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Presidential Civil Service by Mordecai Lee. Copyright © 2016 University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Origins of the Idea of a Presidential Personnel Agency, 1913–1936
2. The Political Battle over Creating a Presidential Personnel Agency, 1937–1939
3. FDR Constructs a Personnel Management Apparatus, 1939
4. The Liaison Office for Personnel Management in Operation, 1939–1941
5. The Liaison Office for Personnel Management in World War II, 1942–1945
6. From the Liaison Office for Personnel Management to a Full-Fledged Presidential Personnel Agency, 1945–1979
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index