Can a Treasury Exec Speak for IRS Employees?

The National Treasury Employees Union is royally irritated about President Bush's announcement yesterday that he would appoint Donald V. Hammond, the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary, as the designated representative of IRS employees on the IRS Oversight Board. “There are no circumstances under which this proposed nominee--who doesn’t even work for the IRS--can be thought of as a representative of IRS employees,” said NTEU President Colleen Kelley.

Hammond is a career federal executive (and a distinguished one at that), but it seems pretty clear he's not exactly what lawmakers had in mind when they established the oversight board in IRS reform legislation passed in 1998.

The law specifies that one member of the board "shall be an individual who is a full-time federal employee or a representative of employees and who is appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate."