Why federal whistleblower protections are needed now

Danielle Brian’s op-ed succinctly describes a crisis that affects us all.

In an op-ed for the Kennebec Journal, POGO’s Danielle Brian provides an overview of a crisis within a crisis:  weak whistleblower protections that threaten to undermine efforts to correct the current economic crisis.

Since 1994, when Congress last strengthened whistleblower protections for federal workers, whistleblowers have won only three out of 206 cases filed in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. That’s a success rate of about one-half of one percent.

This legacy of failed protections is bad not only for whistleblowers, but also for American taxpayers. It sends a strong message to federal workers: Keep your head down and don’t rock the boat. If you see waste, fraud and abuse, keep quiet or risk your career.

Following a summary of the staggering obstacles honest employees face, Brian points out that the vulnerability of whistleblowers has important consequences for all Americans.

Federal workers who expose lax oversight of drugs at the Food and Drug Administration, cozy relationships between FAA inspectors and certain airlines, hundreds of billions of dollars in conscious “underestimates” for the cost of prescription drug coverage, and billions of dollars wasted in no-bid defense contracts face intimidation and retaliation and often are fired or demoted. And their efforts to go through the chain of command or seek relief from retaliation by agency managers nearly always fail.

The Senate stimulus package, which proposes  massive federal expenditures, inexplicably offers none of the protections for federal whistleblowers that the House of Representatives wisely included in its version.  Yet, those protections are vital to include in the final, reconciled bill if taxpayers are to get the full benefit of allocated funds.  It is up to us, now, to make certain that Congress knows that.