Federal Employees Honored in Time's 'Person of the Year'

Think all the rhetoric toward federal employees is negative and inflammatory?

Well, you’re mostly right. But in a rare exception, some federal employees were recognized in Time’s Person of the Year.

The annual recognition went to “Ebola fighters,” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health both receive special shout-outs in the write up.

Two NIH employees -- NIH virologists Nancy Sullivan and Gary Nebel, who have worked on an Ebola vaccine -- received direct mentions.

CDC Director Thomas Frieden was quoted in the story, while the agency’s response efforts drew major praise.

“The CDC, a large and very well-regarded public-health agency, is unsurpassed in its capacity for action, maintaining some 2,000 field workers in 60 countries around the world,” Time wrote. “Those workers in turn can often summon resources from the U.S. to smother epidemics in their infancy abroad.”

The article went on to cite CDC’s training of local volunteers in the “crucial techniques of tracing and evaluating the contacts of Ebola patients.”

So while the federal bureaucracy remains the scourge of many lawmakers and talking heads, at least some federal employees are basking in appreciation. A small victory in a larger battle to regain public trust in government workers? Perhaps, but a nice change of pace nonetheless.