Top Dems demand answers from State Department after employees cite career concerns
Democratic lawmakers are urging the State Department's Inspector General to probe the department's personnel practices after several employees voiced concerns their careers were being stalled because of their past work under the Obama administration.
"Our staffs have been made aware of credible allegations that the State Department has required high-level career civil servants, with distinguished records, serving administrations of both parties, to move to performing tasks outside their area of substantive expertise," the Ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and the Ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a letter obtained by CNN.
"At the very least, this is a waste of taxpayer dollars. At worst it may constitute impermissible abuse and retaliation."
CNN first reported on Friday that several employees in the department were increasingly frustrated after they returned to State from high-level assignments only to be put on low-level jobs such as responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Many of the employees who have been reassigned under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had worked in the offices of special envoys created during the Obama administration. Officials who previously worked in those offices, which Tillerson has done away with, have been assigned to clerical tasks they say do not match up with their previous assignments.
Some of these employees claim that they may be victims of political retribution.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/371071-top-dems-demand-answers-from-state-department-after-employees-cite-career
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