Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., helped advance nominees for the Merit Systems Protection Board, Federal Labor Relations Authority and Office of Special Counsel Wednesday after their previous nominations expired. Bill Clark / Getty Images
Senate panel advances watchdog, labor nominees
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee favorably reported four nominees for adjudicative agencies recently hamstrung by vacancy-related case backlogs to the Senate floor for final consideration.
A Senate panel on Wednesday voted to advance an array of President Biden’s picks to serve at labor management and other federal watchdog agencies so that their nominations can be considered by the full Senate.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., noted that each of the nominees had previously been favorably reported out of committee last year, but since the full Senate had yet to act on the picks by the end of the calendar year, the panel needed to approve them once again.
“These are all nominees that we considered previously and reported favorably at markup last year,” he said. “We’re voting on them again since these nominations were returned to the president at the end of the last session, and I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting these highly qualified nominees.”
Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the agency’s acting chairwoman, was recommended to assume the chair position on a permanent basis on a 7-1 vote. And Henry Kerner, former U.S. special counsel, received a unanimous 8-0 vote to serve as the third member of the MSPB.
The panel also advanced the nomination of Hampton Dellinger, former assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, to succeed Kerner atop the Office of Special Counsel, again by a 7-1 vote.
During his confirmation hearing, Kerner said his experience working at OSC would serve him well as MSPB seeks to tackle a backlog of more than 3,000 cases that accumulated over a five-year period when the agency could not operate due to the lack of a quorum of Senate-confirmed members.
Also receiving a renewed recommendation was Suzanne Summerlin, whom Biden tapped to serve as general counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority last June, again by a 7-1 vote. Labor advocates have pushed for her quick confirmation, as without a general counsel, the agency that oversees labor-management relations at federal agencies cannot issue unfair labor practice complaints.
For nearly the entirety of the Trump administration, the agency lacked a general counsel, causing a backlog of pending cases. Though Biden appointed an acting general counsel in Charlotte Dye, she last year was forced to step down from the role due to the time limits laid out in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.