To the Victor Belongs the Paperwork? Or Not?

washingtonpost.com
Newcomers' Guide to Onerous Paperwork

By Al Kamen

Monday, November 1, 2004; Page A19


No matter who's elected president in tomorrow's voting, there are certain to be thousands of newcomers looking for top jobs in the next administration. And they, like their predecessors, will run into the nightmare appointments process of endless paperwork, time-consuming and often expensive financial disclosure and background investigations under a mindless one-size-fits-all formula. (One form for the covert ops chief at CIA, same one for the assistant secretary of commerce for widget production.)

But there is hope on the horizon. There's a bill in the House that aims to streamline and simplify the financial disclosure process. Problem is that it is limited to the intelligence community and some Democrats say it goes too far in reducing disclosure.

On the Senate side, there's a bill that doesn't look to change the financial disclosure process but asks the Office of Government Ethics to study the situation. The Senate bill also asks the next president to find ways to reduce the layers of appointees and cut the number of political appointees subject to confirmation.

Probably the best thing to do, says New York University professor Paul Light, an expert in these matters who has worked for years to try to make the system at least somewhat rational, would be to apply elements of the House bill government-wide and keep the Senate provisions for reducing total numbers and layers of top officials.

That "would move the process from being miserable to being simply onerous," Light said. "It would be a step forward" in terms of making life easier for nominees. Save everyone else a lot of time and effort, too.

But overall changes are unlikely any time soon, so the first round of officials in the next administration probably will have to deal with the current process.