President Trump is moving to dismantle the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
If Trump’s administration is successful, the OPM would be the first federal department eliminated since World War II.
{mosads}According to the Post, the OPM’s responsibilities would be shifted to three other departments.
Trump’s announcement on the agency is reportedly likely to occur over the summer and OPM employees were briefed on the matter at a meeting in March.
According to the Post, the administration views the agency as an example of inefficient, slow moving government.
“Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson referred The Hill to previous proposals calling for the reorganization of OPM.
“President Trump is committed to reforming the federal government, making it more efficient, effective, and accountable for hardworking American taxpayers,” the spokesperson added.
“It’s a big, exemplary step,” Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget and acting OPM director, told the Post in an interview.
She characterized the agency created to oversee the civil service in 1978 as “fundamentally not set up for success, structurally.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, with 750,000 members, has called the idea “Trump’s Dangerous Plan to Abolish OPM.”
The union predicts a “disastrous” result if policy for federal employees moves so close to the White House.
Federal employees would be forced “into a fight for the pay and benefits they’ve earned every time an administration decides they want to free up money for a pet political project,” the union said.