Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990 TAG: 9006220332
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices ruled 5-4 Thursday that a lower- or middle-level government worker's politics cannot be the controlling issue on any hiring, promotion, transfer, rehiring after layoff or firing.
Going far toward wiping out what remains of the old "spoils system" in filling government jobs, the court ruled it is unconstitutional to use political party activity or support for party candidates as a basis for public employment for anyone other than a person involved in "policy-making."
Joining in Justice William Brennan's majority opinion were Justices Harry Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens and Byron White. Joining Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor.
The decision came as many political scientists are arguing that expanding the patronage power of elected officials might make bureaucracies more accountable and strengthen beleaguered political parties.
The court acted on the same day the Senate failed to overturn President Bush's veto of a bill that would have expanded the rights of federal workers to engage in partisan activity.
While the Supreme Court was vastly expanding the rights of state and local employees to go their own way on political questions, 35 senators voted to retain restrictions on the ability of federal employees to act on their political convictions.
Janice Lachance, the political director of the American Federation of Government Employees, praised the Supreme Court for protecting "the First Amendment freedoms" of state and local employees.
A number of political scientists, especially those whose main concern is strengthening political parties, had a different complaint.
James Q. Wilson, a professor of public management and public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, asked, "Does this mean that the legitimate interests of elected officials in imposing policy-making on the government must be subordinate to the individual rights of employees to reflect their own opinions?"
But Esther Fuchs, a political scientist at Barnard College, said local governments already may be one step ahead of the Supreme Court: "Many cities are hiring temporaries or provisionals when they want to circumvent civil-service rules, so the decision may not have much of an impact."
For foes of machine politics, the political scientists' view overlooks abuses in the patronage system.
Terrence Brunner, executive director of Chicago's Better Government Association, said that instead of making government responsive, the patronage system kept politically connected but incompetent civil servants in office.
Arguments for and against patronage are, of course, as old as the Republic. The modern patronage system was developed by Andrew Jackson and his able political lieutenant, Martin Van Buren, who later became president himself.
The war on patronage began after the civil war, and continued into the 20th century.
The New Deal distributed more and more benefits directly through the federal bureaucracy, circumventing local political organizations; and the prosperity after World War II brought large numbers of voters into the middle class, making them less dependent on the favors of politicians.
Still, patronage survives in other, highly lucrative forms. Susan Tolchin, a professor of public administration at George Washington University, said the patronage that really matters to state, local and national political organizations are the large contracts they can give to private businesses.
by CNB