Aug. 7 Daily News editorial

Federal workers who blow the whistle on waste and corruption may soon have the stronger protection that President Obama vowed to provide upon first assuming office. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has given unanimous approval to the first expansion of whistleblower protections since 1994.

The legislation would allow federal whistleblowers to take complaints of retaliation to federal court, to be heard by a jury. The bill also would extend protection against reprisal to national security whistleblowers, allowing them to take their claims of retaliation to a special board, its members appointed by the president.

This would amount to a very significant and welcome expansion of federal whistleblower protections. Danielle Brian, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight (POGO), called the Senate panel’s unanimous vote “monumental” in an interview with Associated Press writer Richard Lardner, noting that Congress has long resisted granting whistleblowers access to federal courts.

Concern about the potential for waste and corruption created by the distribution of hundreds of billions of stimulus dollars may have helped reshape the political landscape. Transparency is a very effective antidote for waste and abuses. And encouraging honest workers to report incompetence or wrongdoing is a good way to promote government transparency.

Existing whistleblower protections do not offer much encouragement. The deck is stacked against federal workers who blow the whistle on waste or fraud. Whistleblowers who suffer retaliation can appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, but their chances of winning are very slim. The Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Maine, reported that in the past eight years the board has heard 55 claims of retaliation, and only two whistleblowers’ claims were upheld.

National security whistleblowers who suffer retaliation rarely get a hearing. POGO’s Brian, testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, recounted the case of a 10-year federal law enforcement officer with an unblemished record who had questioned a cost-saving proposal. In 2003, Robert MacLean protested Department of Homeland Security plans to secretly save money by canceling air marshal coverage on long-distance flights at time of high alert for terrorist hijackings. Ignored by supervisors, MacLean went to the press. The resulting public pressured caused the agency to back away from plans to reduce air marshal coverage. Three years later, DHS retroactively classified the aborted plans and fired MacLean for divulging it. MacLean’s case has been pending before the Merit Systems Protection Board for three years without so much as a hearing.

Clearly, the stronger protections this Senate bill would provide whistleblowers are long overdue. Congress needs to finalize the legislation as soon as members return from their summer recess, and get it to the White House for Obama’s signature. The sooner would-be whistleblowers know they will be protected against retaliation, the better.