Scholars to unveil plan to repair appointments process

Scholars from the Brookings Institution will unveil an 11-point plan for reforming the presidential appointments process Thursday during a Senate Governmental Affairs committee hearing.

The reform agenda is part of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, a project Brookings started in 1999 to revamp the appointments process and provide practical information and advice to nominees. The agenda addresses problem areas identified through surveys of previous and potential presidential appointees, as well as studying past presidential transitions.

The appointments process, which has drawn many critics over the years, involves a maze of requirements, including financial background reports, FBI checks and congressional scrutiny.

The burdensome process is only getting worse. More than half of appointees confirmed between 1984 and 1999 had to wait five or more months before taking office. By comparison, only one-sixth of appointees confirmed between 1964 and 1984 had to wait that long. As of March 30, only 25 Bush administration nominees had been confirmed.

Brookings' proposals for fixing the appointee process include:

• Establishing a permanent Office of Presidential Personnel that recruits appointees and provides them with transition assistance and orientation.
• Requiring agencies and departments to simplify and standardize information forms.
• Reducing the number of positions subjected to full-field FBI investigations.
• Revamping ethics requirements.
• Tying executive-level salaries to changes in the Consumer Price Index.
• Reducing the number of Senate confirmed presidential appointees.
• Limiting Senate "holds" or delays on nominee confirmations to a maximum of 14 days.
• Mandating a Senate confirmation vote on every nominee no later than 45 days after the nomination was received.
• Allowing nominations to be reported out of Senate committees without a hearing, with the written concurrence of committee members.
• Requiring each department and agency to craft a plan for reducing the number and layers of political appointees by one-third.
• Allowing the President renewed executive reorganization authority to de-layer senior management levels, including political and career employees.

Sean O'Keefe, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, testified that 75 percent of the information he supplied for three different forms was duplicative.

"We need to get to the root of why the various investigative arms seem to be proprietary about the information they gather," said O'Keefe, who has been through the confirmation process three different times.

Simplifying the process is essential, testified G. Calvin Mackenzie, a Colby College professor and author of "The Politics of Presidential Appointments" (Free Press, 1980).

"Discipline the time it takes to make decisions, establish some guidelines, some targets," Mackenzie said. "This body has asked a whole lot of agencies in the government to have guidelines."

Thursday's hearing will include testimony from Amy Comstock, director of the Office of Government Ethics; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., co-chair of the Presidential Appointee Initiative; and former OMB director Franklin Raines, chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae Foundation and co-chair of the Presidential Appointee Initiative.