Debra D’Agostino

When sequestration led agencies to furlough employee two years ago, not everyone took it lying down. The National Federation of Federal Employees launched two lawsuits. It accused the Defense Department of violating the law. The employees’ salaries were not paid from the main pot of funds that had been cut by the law. There’s now an ending to this story. Here to tell it is Debra D’Agostino, an employment attorney at the Federal Practice Group Worldwide Service, in this week’s Legal Loop.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is calling for the removal of the Office of Personnel Management’s CIO Donna Seymour, after the agency’s Office of Inspector General found that the Office of Procurement Operations mismanaged a contract it awarded for identity and credit monitoring services for early victims of the cyber breach.

Some federal employee groups and committee Democrats are taking issue with a series of bills under consideration at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The legislation largely targets accountability issues among Senior Executives and career appointees.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald wants to take senior managers out of Title V and put them into Title 38, a category created for medical professionals. Federal employment attorney Debra D’Agostino, founding partner of the Federal Practice Group, tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin what this means.

A group of Republican senators criticized the Merit Systems Protection Board for overturning disciplinary actions taken against corrupt Veterans Affairs Department bureaucrats. The board and its array of administrative judges almost always uphold agency actions. Attorney Debra D’Agostino, partner at the Federal Practice Group, helps Federal Drive with Tom Temin sort things out.

Debra D’Agostino, a founding partner with the Federal Practice Group, details the strange history of personnel practices for airport security screeners.

More federal employees turned to the Office of Special Counsel with prohibited personnel practice or whistleblower complaints in 2015, and the agency resolved more cases than any other year in its history.

Unless President-elect Donald Trump appoints two new members quickly, the Merit Systems Protection Board will likely have one voting member come March 1, when Chairman Susan Tsui Grundmann’s term expires. But the upcoming seat-changes have federal employment experts wondering whether this is the beginning of the end for MSPB.

Debra D’Agostino, a founding partner with the Federal Practice Group, outlines five rights federal employees should keep in mind as they are doing their job.

How do agency executives sort out public-spirited whistleblowers from mean-spirited leakers? And what rights do whistleblowers in the ultra-sensitive intelligence community have? To provide answers, Debra D’Agostino, founding partner of the Federal Practice Group, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin.