$20 Billion Hidden In The Swamp: Feds Redact 255,000 Salaries

Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski

The only thing the bureaucratic resistance hates more than President Trump is the disclosure of their own salaries. It’s a classic case of the bureaucracy protecting the bureaucracy, underscoring the resistance faced by the new administration.

Recently, Open the Books filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (pictured) for all federal employee names, titles, agencies, salaries, and bonus information.

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We’ve captured and posted online this data for the past 11 years. For the first time, we found missing information throughout the federal payroll disclosures. Here’s a sample of what we discovered from the FY2017 records:

  • 254,839 federal salaries were redacted in the federal civil service payroll (just 3,416 salaries were redacted in FY2016).
  • 68 federal departments redacted salaries. Even small agencies like the National Transportation Services Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation redacted millions of dollars in salaries.
  • $20 billion in estimated payroll now lacks transparency.
  • A 7,360 percent increase in opacity hides one out of every five federal salaries.

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Who’s the bureaucrat in charge? Not a Trump appointee – the president doesn’t even have a current nominee at OPM. So, the buck stops with new acting Director Kathleen McGettigan, a 25-year staffer who assumed the position because she was the next in line, not because the White House appointed her.

Trump has the power to replace her at any time. This lack of transparency is apparently a result of the president’s failure to appoint his people to executive positions. Trump knows controlling the human resource department is key to managing the federal bureaucracy. In fact, Trump forecast this type of institutional resistance in his inaugural address.

“The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories.… And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes starting right here and right now.”

The decision to redact 255,000 federal salaries for $20 billion in payroll harms oversight. The American people deserve to know who makes how much, in what position, employed by which agency.

For example, more than 6,600 salaries were redacted at the Department of Veterans Affairs. At an agency where hiring priorities have been repeatedly questioned, transparency is crucial. In recent years, just one in 10 new hires at the VA was a doctor. In FY2017, the VA hired 8,727 new employees and just 561, or 6 percent, were doctors.

In December 2017, our “OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Mapping the Swamp, a Study of the Administrative State” found $114 billion in compensation paid to 1.35 million federal civil service employees (excluding the U.S. Post Office) in fiscal year 2016. We found 165 percent growth in bureaucrats making $200,000 or more; 30,000 bureaucrats out-earning all 50 governors at $190,000; and the average salary at 78 large federal agencies exceeding $100,000.

At OpenTheBooks.com, citizens have the tools to investigate their local piece of the federal bureaucracy. We have literally mapped the swamp, pinning all federal disclosed bureaucrats plus post office employees by employer location ZIP Code on our interactive map.

But not this year. Our organization can’t properly quantify the FY2017 payroll because of the massive salary redactions. After all, we can’t map what we can’t see.

Make no mistake – even under the Obama administration, too much information was redacted.

Last year, we complained about the 314,890 redacted employee names, including all 77,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service and the $1.1 billion in “performance bonuses” shielded by federal union agreements (FY2016). We worked with Congressman Ron DeSantis on The Taxpayer-Funded Pension Disclosure Act, which would open the books on $125 billion in federal pension data.

This year’s massive increase in redactions wasn’t a result of new policy, but a reinterpretation of existing policy. The OPM didn’t even mention the change in its FOIA response letter, making no legal argument for the 255,000 new redactions. It wasn’t until we asked the agency about the missing information that a representative issued the following response:

“On an ongoing basis, OPM reviews its methods for creating data files to ensure consistency with its Data Release Policy governing the release of records related to federal employees in positions or agencies that require location information to be redacted. Because the Adjusted Basic Salary field contains locality pay, OPM recently began redacting this information for certain classes of employees, hence the drop that your IT department noticed.”

This didn’t make much sense, so we asked again. You can read the agency’s third attempt at a response via its spokesperson here.

Facing resistance like this, the president has to work hard to deliver on his promises. The administrative state was designed to resist reform. Without a constant effort, the bureaucracy always wins.

 

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Wip
Wip

Is this a case of envy by the inquisitors or greed by the receivers?

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Unredact and we’ll find out.

B.N. Counter
B.N. Counter

If it was a private, or even publicly held company that pays dividends to shareholders,
individual lower level employees deserve some semblance of privacy of what they earn.
I wouldn’t want the public snooping to see what I bring in on an annual basis. MYOB.

But, these people are funded by the taxpayers, and taxes & reg. fees are ridiculously too high.
I suspect, like the State Dept. clean out of holdover leeches who do little to earn their keep,
most Fed agencies could use a thorough evaluation of salaries, and a purging of excessive
numbers of the over-abundant staff that are not vital to operations.
Transparency of Fed salaries, for the taxpayer who is getting whacked is a legit request.

If one claims the Fed. Reserve is at fault for running the presses, the inflation hurts both the earners and the consumers with a devalued currency that buys less and less.

Time is running short, to try and fix this, but something should be at least attempted to reign in wage and pension costs, like the common man has been subjected to.
Lucrative gov. gravy train jobs and golden parachutes are no longer sustainable.

Small business owners and large corporations do this all the time for economic survival.
Why should the Feds be exempt? We’re at least 23 Tril in debt, besides the other liabilities.
If nothing changes in the effort to avoid going bust, the grandkids are going to inherit an insurmountable debt and a much lower standard of living. Nice legacy to leave them.

AJ
AJ

Just a theory……we could fire 1/2 the federal workforce, which ones would we the people actually miss having around? Social Security processors. The individuals in the military. Park Rangers. But the people with a title as long as your arm at the Pentagon, and the contracts they oversee? Fagheddaboudid. Ditto almost all the TSA; we need people trained in spotting shoplifters to spot the people we need spotted. 17 intelligence agencies? A dozen too many. The Department of Education? …giggle…I’m old enough to remember not having one. Hire more border patrol, ICE, and the courts to deport. Pretty sure we could do without SCOTUS for a very LONG time. And if the Congress could be prevented from getting re-elected, we could probably REALLY clean house. Oh, and that Central bank? Nationalize it, it is demonstrably bankrupt. No need to totally kill it, just keep it in a choke-hold. And invent a time machine and go back and kill the people who created it and ruined our nation. There needs to be a LONG waiting period before one can work at a too-big-to-jail bank and get anywhere near a federal job or policymaker. And start paying people to get out of jail and deport themselves to Liberia forever.

bigfoot expects big things from Joe Kennedy including "rust free bridges and roads"
bigfoot expects big things from Joe Kennedy including "rust free bridges and roads"

And here I always vote in my local elections against every single new tax proposal, because it is the salaries and benefits of over-paid bureaucrats that consume most (~70%+) of the “revenue” (don’t you love that word?)other than that spent on new, imperial buildings now and then. What do I get? Another day older and deeper in debt. It’d be odd if it were anything other than that. After all, I own property while the “others” are either drunk on the idea that government is good, are bureaucrats themselves, and/or are flat out recipients in one way or another. Yes, poor me. OTOH karmic debt obligations might be a bitch if it’s true that the Universe is friendly.

If this were a diary I’d have to admit something to myself. “HYPOCRITE!” I’d say. “You accept your SS checks and your Medicare coverage that has amounted to several hundred thousand dollars! Will you stop that and send it all back so that your self-anointed ‘integrity’ is true and not just imagined by you? What is your answer?” Well, um, can someone promise me I won’t be reborn in Zimbabwe?

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