Agency shutdown messaging draws Hatch Act, Antideficiency Act challenges
The Hatch Act is the focus of several complaints, but one group is taking a different tactic by arguing the messages violate federal appropriations law.
The Office of Special Counsel has received multiple complaints about federal agencies sharing political messages during the shutdown, while one nonprofit is alleging the messaging violates the Antideficiency Act.
Public Citizen has filed nine complaints with OSC over the first three days of the shutdown. The group alleges agencies are violating the Hatch Act by using “explicitly partisan messaging” blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
“The Trump administration is violating the Hatch Act with reckless abandon, using taxpayer dollars to plaster partisan screeds on every government homepage that they can get their hands on,” Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with Public Citizen, said in a statement.
The messaging in question began at the Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this week. HUD posted a message on its website Tuesday stating that the “Radical Left are going to shut down the government.”
HUD’s website now states, “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.”
The Small Business Administration followed suit on Wednesday with a “special message” at the top of the SBA website stating that “Senate Democrats” voted to block a “clean” stopgap funding bill.
Other agencies have since posted similar messages on their websites.
Public Citizen’s OSC complaints are against HUD, SBA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, the Agriculture Department and the White House.
Multiple agencies have also sent internal messages to their workforces blaming the shutdown on Democrats. And furloughed staff at the Education Department say their out-of-office messages were updated without their doing to blame the shutdown on Senate Democrats.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Ca.) has also called on acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer to have OSC investigate the messaging for violating the Hatch Act.
The 1939 law “limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs.”
But HUD Secretary Scott Turner brushed aside those concerns in an interview with NewsNation on Wednesday night, telling host Chris Cuomo he’s not worried “at all” about violating the Hatch Act.
“And this is not about propaganda, Chris, this is just about letting the American people know what’s going on. But we really need to be talking about how this government shutdown impacts the American people,” Turner said.
OSC is an independent agency responsible for safeguarding the federal merit system, including investigating and prosecuting potential Hatch Act violations. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ousted Hampton Dellinger, the Senate-confirmed Special Counsel, prior to the end of his five-year term. OSC has been led by an acting leader ever since.
Antideficiency allegations
Meanwhile, the Democracy Defenders Fund took a different approach to the messaging. In an Oct. 2 letter to the Government Accountability Office, the nonprofit urged GAO to investigate whether the messaging violates the Antideficiency Act.
The group’s letter calls the messaging “publicity and propaganda.”
“As a result, any employee who has participated in publishing or directing the publication of these partisan political messages may have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prevents the use of government resources for any reason in excess of a given appropriation,” the Democracy Defenders Fund wrote to GAO.
GAO evaluates compliance with appropriations law, including ruling on potential violations of the Antideficiency Act. It has issued multiple decisions in recent months on the Trump administration’s compliance with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
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