Watchdog group files Hatch Act complaint over federal agencies blaming Democrats for shutdown
A watchdog group has filed a Hatch Act complaint against two government agencies that added banners to their websites blaming the government shutdown on Democrats.
Public Citizen filed the complaint late Wednesday against Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA), and Scott Turner, head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The filing with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) argues the text at each agency violates the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees, including Cabinet members, from electioneering while at work.
“Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses,” text on the SBA website reads.
“Every day that Senate Democrats continue to oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding.”
Public Citizen called the move “a highly partisan post targeting both employees and the public asserting that congressional Democrats are solely responsible for the shutdown and causing financial harm to small businesses and the American public.”
An original message at HUD that said Democrats would “inflict massive pain on the American people” has been updated now that the government has shut down.
“The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government. HUD will use available resources to help Americans in need,” the updated message reads.
Congressional Democrats have blasted the White House for making light of a shutdown, excluding their priorities, and using the shutdown as a way to fire additional federal workers.
They’ve argued the government funding bill should be a vehicle for lowering health care costs in the wake of other GOP measures gutting access to health care.
Public Citizen addressed both agency messages, saying each “recit[es] the same derogatory descriptions of congressional Democrats, blaming solely Democrats for causing the shut down, and heaping praise for the virtues of Donald Trump in attempting to protect the American people.”
The website messages, while highly unusual, are not likely to be cited for a Hatch Act violation.
The Trump administration fired the prior head of the OSC despite his confirmation to a five-year term, and President Trump has nominated controversial ally Paul Ingrassia to lead the office.
“The message being broadcast at the top of the Small Business Administration’s website is an obvious Hatch Act violation. The SBA and other agencies increasingly adopting this illegal, partisan tactic think they can get away with it because Trump has gutted any and all ethics oversight of the federal government,” Public Citizen said in a statement.
“Ethics officials — as lacking in power and status as they may be under Trump — must act immediately to prove them wrong. The American people deserve better.”
But ethics experts have also cast doubt on whether similar messages included in emails to federal workers would violate the Hatch Act.
While it’s highly unusual for government communications to include political messages, the content may not violate the contours of the Hatch Act as they do not reference an election.
The SBA did not respond to request for comment.
But Turner told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo on Wednesday night that he was “not worried at all” about whether he had violated the Hatch Act.
“And this is not about propaganda, Chris, this is just about letting the American people know what’s going on. But we really need to be talking about how this government shutdown impacts the American people,” the HUD secretary said while on “Cuomo.”