Education Department puts hold on 5-day suspension of employee who provided The Post with budget information - The Washington Post

Education Department puts hold on 5-day suspension of employee who provided The Post with budget information - The Washington Post

Education Department puts hold on 5-day suspension of employee who provided The Post with budget information

The Education Department has placed an indefinite hold on the five-day suspension of a budget analyst who provided information to The Washington Post about the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal before it was released, her attorney said. The agency accused the employee of “conduct unbecoming a federal employee,” but her attorney described her as a whistleblower whose efforts to expose mismanagement are protected by federal law.

Rebecca Delaney, an analyst in the Education Department’s Office of Finance and Operations since 2016, received a letter dated Nov. 15 from an agency official saying the suspension would be delayed “until further notice."

Delaney and her attorney, Cathy Harris, had sought a stay of the suspension while the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, reviews the case at their request. A letter to that office from Harris said Delaney provided the information to The Post “because she reasonably believed that the information in the budget was inaccurate, misleading and constituted gross mismanagement.”

The special counsel’s office agreed to investigate the case and asked the Education Department to issue a hold on the suspension, which was granted the work day before it was to begin, Harris said.

Delaney learned in an Aug. 30 letter from the director of the Education Department’s budget office that she was being punished for “conduct unbecoming a federal employee and lack of candor.” The letter said Delaney knew the data was “subject to an embargo” and that it is “uncouth or unprofessional” to violate the embargo. It also said that the leak of information had “a ripple effect throughout the agency” and that the “reputation of [the budget office] and its trustworthiness was tarnished.” And it said that Delaney suggested when initially asked that the information may have been leaked from her computer. Her “lack of candor was intentional … to protect yourself from ostracization,” the letter said.

Harris said the department “never should have decided to suspend” Delaney, but that she and Delaney are “gratified” the department placed a hold on the suspension. “We are thankful to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, who sought the stay while it continues to investigate our whistleblower retaliation CONTINUE READING: Education Department puts hold on 5-day suspension of employee who provided The Post with budget information - The Washington Post