NOAA Report Admits NWSEO’s Lobbying
Saved Forecaster Jobs
(July 3, 2013) Last year, Deputy NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan led an investigation into the alleged financial mishandling at the NWS that lead to the discipline of one or more agency officials and the unplanned retirement of NWS Director Jack Hayes. NOAA issued a report, which was only publicly available in a highly redacted version due to alleged privacy concerns. NWSEO became suspicious that one of the redactions (on page 17 of this report) had nothing to do with protecting the privacy of the employees who were being investigated for misconduct, but in fact discussed NWSEO's successful lobbying efforts.
NWSEO submitted a FOIA request for the unredacted version of the suspicious paragraph, which was denied on the grounds that its release would ostensibly violate someone's personal privacy. In November, NWSEO filed a FOIA appeal arguing that the only entity that had any privacy interest in a discussion of NWSEO was NWSEO and that NOAA was not protecting the union’s privacy by refusing to disclose the unredacted section of the report to the union.
The Department of Commerce was required by law to respond to this appeal with 20 days. Seven months later, DOC has now disclosed the document without the redaction that discussed NWSEO. The relevant paragraph is pasted below and basically credits NWSEO with savings forecaster jobs through its lobbying efforts in Congress.
Note that the report says NWSEO "complained" to Congress- a clear reflection of the agency's contempt for both citizens' right to petition Congress, and for the legitimacy of Congress' oversight role.
-NWSEO-
No one cares more for National Weather Service employees than
National Weather Service employees.
No one works harder for National Weather Service employees than
National Weather Service employees.
We are NWSEO.