Comment from Anonymous

Re: OPM Proposed Rule, RIN 3206-AO91, FR Doc. 2026-13445 I respectfully oppose this proposed rule and urge the Office of Personnel Management to withdraw it. The proposal incorrectly assumes that procedural protections are the primary obstacle to holding federal employees accountable. Agencies already possess substantial authority under 5 U.S.C. Chapters 43 and 75 to discipline or remove employees for poor performance or misconduct. The greater challenge is ensuring that personnel actions are lawful, factually supported, consistently applied, and free from favoritism, retaliation, discrimination, and other improper motives. Congress established the Merit System Principles in 5 U.S.C. § 2301 and the Prohibited Personnel Practices in 5 U.S.C. § 2302 to protect both federal employees and the public from arbitrary or abusive personnel actions. Weakening due process and independent review shifts additional authority to management without providing corresponding safeguards against supervisory bias, selective enforcement, disparate treatment, or retaliation. The proposed rule does not demonstrate that employee due process, rather than inadequate supervisory training, inconsistent management practices, insufficient documentation, staffing shortages, or adjudicative delays, is the principal cause of accountability problems. OPM should not reduce longstanding protections without first addressing these less restrictive and more directly relevant alternatives. Supervisory quality and adherence to merit-system requirements vary across the federal government. Existing procedures help ensure that adverse actions are tested against evidence and law rather than accepted solely on the judgment of the officials who initiated or approved them. Shortening these procedures could make poor management practices easier to conceal and more difficult to correct. Accountability must apply equally to supervisors and executives. Agencies should identify documented patterns of management failure, including substantiated prohibited personnel practices, repeated MSPB reversals, sustained Office of Special Counsel findings, EEOC findings, Inspector General findings, recurring corrective actions, unusually high turnover, and repeated successful employee appeals. Complaints alone should not establish misconduct, but recurring complaints should prompt an independent review, and substantiated patterns should result in meaningful corrective action. Agencies must also stop addressing management failures by merely reassigning or transferring supervisors to other offices. Moving a manager without addressing documented misconduct or deficient supervisory practices transfers the problem and exposes additional employees to the same conduct. Employees who report waste, fraud, abuse, safety concerns, discrimination, legal violations, or other wrongdoing depend on meaningful due process and independent review. Weakening those protections may make retaliation easier and discourage employees from reporting matters that affect government integrity and public safety. If lengthy MSPB appeal times are a concern, the appropriate solution is to provide the Board with sufficient funding, administrative judges, support staff, technology, and operational resources. Administrative delays do not justify reducing employee rights or limiting independent review. Increasing MSPB capacity would allow cases to be resolved more promptly without sacrificing fairness or accuracy. The federal civil service system exists not merely to facilitate removals, but to ensure that personnel decisions are lawful, evidence-based, impartial, and consistent with merit-system requirements. True accountability requires competent supervision, meaningful oversight, adequate adjudicative resources, and equal accountability for employees and management. For these reasons, I urge OPM to withdraw the proposed rule and instead strengthen supervisory accountability, preserve meaningful due process, address documented patterns of management misconduct, and provide the MSPB with the resources necessary to resolve appeals promptly and fairly. Relevant authorities include 5 U.S.C. §§ 2301 and 2302 and 5 U.S.C. Chapters 43, 75, and 77.