America's Talking - Federal Website Tracking Taxpayer-Funded Union Work Disappears

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

The Biden administration is under fire after a website to help keep federal funding of union work transparent disappeared. The federal site in question tracks what is called “official time,” a term for when taxpayer-funded federal employees use part of their work hours to work on behalf of a public union. The Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group that works on these issues, released a report on the Biden administration change. The tracking site was on the Office of Personnel Management’s website since 2013, but appears to have been taken down over the summer. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAila, Vice President of News and content at the Franklin News Foundation, which publishes the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does each and every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, December 1st. Casey, news broke this week that the Biden administration took down. a transparency website that helps keep track of federal funding of union work, of union workers who are employed by the federal government, but also do work outside of their federal government jobs and work for the union. This is a bit confusing to me, but tell us about it. Yeah, Dan, as you know, I am diligently tracking how your tax dollars are spent at the Soonerspray.com. And you may not know this, but you pay for federal employees to spend part of their work hours working for unions.

It's not outside of their federal job. It's part of legislation that was passed about 50 years ago that allows federal employees to use some of their work time. It's called official time to some of their tax fare funded time to help unions to do unions bidding. And so that has kind of been there was a. Of course, they can serve like, hey, wait a minute, this could be abused. And so to keep it from being abused, the Office of Personnel Management has started putting up a website. I think the website went up in 2013, but there's been different reports tracking how exactly

this time was being used, how much was being done. So that website went up in 2013, but it had, you know, how the time was being used for some transparency sake. And although there's not great enforcement of if people were actually tracking, they're time they're using for the union. They invite himself as, you know, they try to be very, very pro-union. And he's outright said that he wants to heavily unionize the federal workforce, right? So, I mean, he's really all on that.

And of course, we know that unions give a lot of money to his party, you know, tens of million dollars to his party, that being the Democrat party. So this website, though, it's gone down. And the website is supposed to track the transparency of this money. And they say that that actually went down over the summer. And, you know, I reached out to OPM and it's like, hey, what's going on here with this? And they said that the website is being, you know, basically renovated. But it's a, you know, it's just one page of a website and it's been several months.

So I think it's a little hard to believe this isn't like it went down for the weekend, you know, to get a facelift. It's been several months now. It's December 1st, Casey. And you said you said the website went down over the summer. Right. Yeah, that's more than a week's worth of maintenance. Yeah, it doesn't really pass the smell test. The transparency website needs to be renovated for six months.

So what did, I mean, so maintenance is the excuse. What did like, for example, the U.S. Department of Labor have to say about it? Yeah, they did not respond, and they were busy. Maybe they're all working on the website. Maybe the whole agency has directed its energy towards fixing this website to renovating it for its new modern, 2023 look, but they were not able to get back to me. I think, you know, this idea, I think that this idea, though, official time is so interesting and could really use some more transparency. You know, I talked to the Freedom Foundation, which is a nonprofit group that

works on these issues, and they really are the ones who even alerted me to it, you know, and I think it's really interesting to see also how the politics works into it, because Democrat administrations try to maximize this time because of this official time. Because really it frees up federal employees to be engaged in a form of politics. They can lobby. They can do ideological things that help the interests of the Democratic Party all in government time. And so when Republicans come in, they try to try to limit it. So, for example, former president Donald Trump passed an executive order to limit official time.

when he came into office, but one of the first actions that Biden did when he came into office was to repeal it. So this is not just a union taxpayer issue. This is a very political issue because Democrats want to kind of exploit this measure to get some federal employees doing ideological things to advance their interest. And of course, the bigger unions get and the more money unions have, the more money goes to Democrat lawmakers, right? I mean, that's no secret. And so when you have federal employees trying to grow unions, they are by proxy growing one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party. Interesting, Casey. This is something we should continue to follow, I think. Let's see how long this maintenance lasts. And if this website ever reappears that tracks these union hours that are being spent not doing the work for taxpayers, but doing the work for the unions. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the CenterSquare.com.

For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulip. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Knowledge is power, and you deserve to know what happens in your state government. That's why the nonprofit Franklin News Foundation is bringing you straight news journalism through the Center Square, reporting on state authorities and publishing stories that show where your money goes and who spends it. By supporting the Center Square, you can track politicians' use of taxpayer money and demand transparency from elected officials.

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