Federal News Radio: Don’t Treat Whistleblowers Like the Plague
In this column, GAP Legal Director Tom Devine urges federal agency managers to embrace whistleblowing employees rather than retaliate against them, outlining several reasons why working with employees to root out wrongdoing is in the best long-term interest of any agency. This opinion piece is part of Federal News Radio‘s weeklong series, Trust Redefined: Reconnecting Government and its Employees.
Key Quote: Federal whistleblowers normally act out of loyalty to their agency or its mission. If they successfully gain the trust of superiors, overnight their reputation becomes one of a problem solver, not a threat. If more managers view them through this prism — seeing whistleblowers as engaging in the freedom to contribute rather than dissent — then the consequences from disclosures will shift sharply from mutually negative to mutually positive.
Over the last quarter-century there has been a legal revolution in rights both for government and corporate whistleblowers, who are lionized by the public as never before. But they are a source of increasing conflict within organizations. Rates of retaliation actually have risen as rights have been created or strengthened.
It shouldn’t be this way, nor does it have to be.
VTDigger: Whistleblower Says New Charges are Retaliation by State Officials
A Vermont state employee says allegations of misconduct against him and an investigation looking into the charges are “the latest in a series of trumped up excuses to retaliate against him for speaking out against employment practices at the state’s vocational rehabilitation office.” He has filed a lawsuit charging state agencies and staff with violating Vermont’s whistleblower protection act.
Buffalo News: Whistleblowers Group Says Approval of Peace Bridge Project was Illegal
The General Service Administration’s 2012 approval of a New York bridge project was illegal, according to a sister organization of GAP. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, has challenged the federal agency for conducting “the lowest-level environmental review possible” of the project.
Dylan Blaylock is Communications Director for the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.