Too Righteous?

By Jerome Cramer/Washington

Just since November, more than 30 top officials at the Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service and NASA have announced their resignations rather than abide by tough new ethics laws designed to block federal employees from using their jobs as a fast track to riches in the private sector. Taken aback by the departures and complaints by defense contractors, Congress last week voted to delay the new measures for 60 days.

The sudden flight from public service highlights an already vexing problem. A score of people approached for the once coveted Pentagon job of Under Secretary for Acquisition have refused to submit to the nomination process. At the Department of Energy, five people have rejected offers to serve as the $80,700-a-year Assistant Secretary in charge of nuclear energy. "I'm having trouble persuading people with needed skills to join the Government," complains Energy Secretary James Watkins. "They might swallow the lower pay, but they balk when they learn ethics laws could bar them from returning to their old jobs."

Departing Government officials are now barred from working on specific projects they handled while they were in Government. Under new terms that were to take effect May 16, retiring federal procurement officials, for example, would have been forbidden to make any contact with their former agency for up to two years. "Unfortunately, there aren't many monks qualified as nuclear engineers who want to become an Assistant Secretary," says Chase Untermeyer, director of the office of presidential personnel. Mark Abramson, director of the Center for Excellence in Government, says top jobs are going begging because of "low pay, anxiety over postemployment restrictions and the feeling that high Government service is life in a fishbowl."

Congress is considering ways to help, at least for the most technical jobs. During hearings, Georgia's Senator Sam Nunn told Watkins he might consider a waiver that would permit some Energy Department employees to be released from Government pay caps. "We need some carrot to get good people into Government," said Nunn. "Till now all we've been showing is the stick."