What Could Possibly Stop Barr From Just Firing People?
That's the question that commenter aNanyMouse just posed . It's the same question that's been asked innumerable times--in one form or another--throughout the past three years.
I couldn't possibly go into all the ins and outs, and I'm anything but an expert on federal employee employment law, but below is a selection from a Daily Caller article (Here’s Why It’s All But Impossible To Fire A Fed ) that may give you some idea of why Barr or any other government official doesn't throw the bums out.
The long and the short of it is--do you want Barr and similarly placed officials to do their jobs, or do you want them to spend their time tilting at windmills, i.e., trying to fire people? No, of course, that shouldn't be the choice, but in the real world it often comes down to that. In other words, Barr tries to do his job, but has to carry either dead weight on his back or people who find subtle ways to slow him down dragging behind him. At a certain point, if he wants to get anything done, he has to find a way to work around these people. He's not trying to "protect the institution" or any of the other nonsensical claims that are made against him. He's simply having to prioritize how he's going to spend his time:
F ederal workers are far more likely to be audited by the IRS or get arrested for drunk driving than they are to be fired from the civil service payroll for poor performance or misconduct.
The odds are one-in-175 for the IRS audit and one-in-200 for the drunk driving arrest, while the odds for a fed to be fired in a given year are one-in-500, according to the Government Accountability Office . The rate is higher for employees who are in the one-year probationary period that follows their hiring.
...
With such odds, it’s no wonder that bureaucratic horror stories are so common. The Daily Caller News Foundation, for example, recently reported Environmental Protection Agency officials let an employee convicted of stealing thousands of dollars worth of equipment from the EPA back to work after a 30-day suspension . Another EPA employee was convicted of sneaking marijuana and marijuana pipes into a federal facility, but went back to work after a 21-day suspension.
The embattled Department of Veterans Affairs said it will take no less than 275 days to take disciplinary action against a nurse charged with operating on a veteran while drunk , due to the complex and time-consuming hoops administrators have to jump through, according another DCNF report.
Federal workers have enjoyed incredible job security for a long time, thank to layers of bureaucracy, complicated employment laws , well-funded and politically powerful government unions, and multiple incentives against firing anyone, former federal personnel officials told TheDCNF.
“It ends up being very, very difficult to fire a federal employee even when there is the best of cause,” Joseph Morris, general counsel for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration. “At the end of the day, the civil service often ends up being a haven for poorly performing employees, and that drags down the morale of others.”
Or, worse--ideologically motivated (usually Leftist) employees who wage a guerilla war on behalf of their cause, with little fear of any consequences.
Morris and former colleague Patrick Korten, who worked as OPM’s executive assistant director for communications and policy, would know. They listed every possible step a manager had to take to fire an incompetent federal employee using old computer paper. Their boss, then-OPM Director Donald J. Devine, often rolled that paper out for congressional committees.
“It was a demonstration of, if someone chooses to follow every single twist and turn in the regulations, this is how it could turn out,” Korten said.
It stretched 30 feet.
The other aspect of all this is that the bias among employees at most federal agencies is definitely left of center. These people network and they get their friends into key positions. Taking control of an agency in these conditions, when it's almost impossible to fire someone just because they're resisting and foot dragging, is a time consuming and very difficult task that is never finished.