Prof. Nicholas Bednar ’16 Quoted in FedScoop About Reasons for New Classification of Federal Workers

Professor Nicholas Bednar ’16 was quoted in FedScoop about an executive order signed by Donald Trump to establish a new classification of federal workers in policy-related roles who aren’t career civil servants called “Schedule G.” Researchers and academics say the schedule appears to create another avenue for political officials in the U.S. government and follows efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the federal workforce, including reductions-in-force, terminations, and programs to incentivize worker departures and question the utility of the schedule in the context of the existing Schedule C that appears to duplicate existing hiring abilities under that classification. Prof. Bednar similarly said he believed the Schedule G proposal was “redundant with the existing Schedule C.” He said that Schedule C was initially created with the intention of establishing classification for lower-level, non-career political appointees in “confidential or policy-determining” roles, and to preserve Schedule C, Congress exempted “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character” roles from the competitive service in the Civil Service Reform Act.