Your nominee, Cathy Harris, to be Chairman of US Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is stonewalling a well-evidenced and significant whistleblower disclosure against her and her predecessors. She is failing or refusing to report to you and Congress whether federal agency employees are adequately protected from reprisal and other corrupt agency employment practices as required by 5 U.S.C. section 1204(a)(3). She is not “sounding the alarm” to activate your statutory duty at 5 U.S.C. section 2301(c) to “take any action necessary” to ensure federal agency employment practices are merit-based, not corruption based.

Not only does she fail to “sound the alarm,” she refuses to do the special studies necessary to buttress the widespread perception—in Congress and elsewhere—that federal agency whistleblowers are neither adequately heeded nor protected. It is telling that of all MSPB’s statutory duties, it has failed or refused to issue regulations only for this.

Given her stonewalling, we respectfully request you to direct the Attorney General, per 28 U.S.C. section 511, to issue his opinion on the whether Cathy Harris, as other past and current leaders of MSPB, per 5 U.S.C. section 1204(a)(3), have the duty to perform the special studies and other research necessary to determine and report—to you and Congress—whether federal agency employee are adequately protected from whistleblower reprisal and other corrupt agency employment practices. If they are not, then the public interest in a civil service free of such corruption is NOT being adequately protected and neither is American health, safety, security and welfare.