Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) believes there may be a legislative fix for the culture of whistleblower retaliation a congressionally chartered report last week said persists across the Energy Department’s nuclear complex.
The McCaskill-authored S. 795, “a bill to enhance whistleblower protection for contractor and grantee employees,” passed the Senate by unanimous consent in May and was introduced in the House in late June. The legislation would make permanent an expiring whistleblower protection program established in 2013 and administered by agency inspectors general.
Congressional allies of the program believe it is both more user friendly than existing whistleblower programs, and better insulated from the day-to-day project deadlines and financial pressures that drive federal contractors. According to a Government Accountability Office report released July 14, four DOE contractors at 10 DOE sites implemented the pilot program. Contractors at DOE’s Hanford and Savannah River sites notably did not, GAO said.
The legislation “applies whistleblower protections to employees of defense and civilian personal services contractors, subcontractors, grantees, or subgrantees and extends the prohibition against reimbursement of legal fees incurred in defending against reprisal claims brought by whistleblowers to defense and civilian subcontractors,” according to the Congress.gov summary.
Although the House has not scheduled any action on the whistleblower bill, McCaskill said Thursday in a Capitol Hill press conference that she and her House colleagues were trying to “get through the process and across the finish line before the end of this calendar year.”
The pilot whistleblower program, which absent congressional action expires in January, is perceived by McCaskill and some of her Senate colleagues as less onerous than existing whistleblower programs run by federal agencies and their contractors. Existing programs are so complex that whistleblowers sometimes feel compelled to hire a lawyer just to file a complaint, McCaskill said during the press conference. The pilot program, the DOE inspector general told the GAO for the report, does not require any legal assistance.
It remains to be seen whether McCaskill’s bill will be signed into law in a contentious election year in which Congress still has not passed the 12 annual appropriations packages that fund the federal government. If nothing else, the bill has not drawn a veto threat.
While McCaskill’s whistleblower protection bill has sailed through Congress so far, neither the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform nor the House Committee on Armed Services have scheduled a hearing on the proposal.
