Earlier in his term, President Joe Biden nixed an online database meant to hold federal public employee unions accountable, and nearly two years later, it is still nowhere to be found.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has long maintained a website to track “official time,” a practice where federal workers who are part of a union can perform union duties while on government time and therefore at taxpayers’ expense.
Since the practice amounts to taxpayer-funded union activity, lawmakers have asked for decades for accountability and reporting on official time. For years, OPM tracked and published information about taxpayer-funded union activity for transparency on a public website.
As The Center Square previously reported, however, that website disappeared in 2023.
Nearly two years later, it is still missing and OPM is refusing to comment.
When the accountability webpage initially disappeared in 2023, an OPM spokesperson told The Center Square that “previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience.”
Since then, OPM has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Max Nelsen from the Freedom Foundation told The Center Square that despite OPM’s initial comment, the website changes have discontinued years of online tracking of unions’ use of taxpayer resources. Not only that, the history of previous years’ reports disappeared with the website as well.
“OPM has not only gone out of its way to obscure official government reports documenting how much federal employees’ union work costs taxpayers, but has stonewalled attempts to understand why OPM’s webpage on official time was removed and has neglected to publish any updated estimates of official time use during this administration, probably because any such report would almost certainly show the cost of taxpayer-funded union work skyrocketing as fast as Americans’ grocery bills,” Nelsen told The Center Square
Lawmakers formally inquired to OPM about the issue, but so far little has changed. In a letter responding to 10 U.S. senators’ inquiry sent in April of this year and first obtained by The Center Square, OPM defended its decision.
OPM argued that although it has regularly published official time reports since the Clinton administration, it is not legally obligated to continue and said that neither the White House nor any unions were consulted in the decision.
OPM also told lawmakers it had moved its official time reporting to the “agency reports” section of its website. However, a quick look at that website shows no official time reports have been published there since 2019, before President Joe Biden took office.
Nelsen said he has submitted public information requests to OPM but has not gotten a response.
“OPM’s conduct demonstrates its contempt for American taxpayers and its disregard of even the most minimal obligations of transparent government,” he added.
