Keep Off the Grass

By Amanda Griscom Little, Grist.org. Posted September 3, 2004.

The Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, NASA headquarters, and the Washington Monument are among the many federal properties that may be off-limits to presidential and congressional candidates for campaign photo ops this election season, thanks to a guidance recently released by the Bush administration's U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

The OSC is an independent federal agency that investigates and prosecutes issues ranging from whistleblower complaints to concerns that federal employees are participating in campaign activities prohibited by the Hatch Act, which defines election-related political no-no's for people on the government payroll.

Kerry advisers and some environmentalists are royally peeved about the advisory, calling it at best deliberately ambiguous and misleading, at worst a deliberate maneuver to gain advantage over John Kerry 's presidential campaign.

The guidance is "an extraordinary reinterpretation of the Hatch Act," said David Hayes, who oversaw national parks as deputy secretary of the interior under Clinton, and who now serves as a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign. "It is a patently ridiculous and extreme measure that the Bush administration is taking to cover up its appalling record on funding and protecting national parks after promising in the 2000 campaign to make it a priority."

But OSC spokesperson Cathy Deeds responded that her agency is merely "restating the Hatch Act" in response to repeated queries over the last several months from federal employees at various agencies about which campaign activities they can participate in and what federal property is fair game. On Aug. 9, the office issued a government-wide guidance in an effort "to clear up the confusion."

That just happened to be the very day that John Kerry made a campaign stop at the Grand Canyon and delivered a speech criticizing the shortfall of funding for national parks under the Bush administration.

Critics scoff at the notion that the OSC simply intended to clarify existing law. "If they were trying to clear things up, they failed miserably," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "We're getting repeated calls from confused employees who have no idea what to make of these restrictions. The Hatch Act restrictions have been restated in a way that's at once sweeping and obscurely detailed with Dr. Seuss-style contingencies – in a box, on a rock, with a clock. They wanted to sow confusion and they are making it so convoluted that nobody knows what to do."

The act does not prohibit the actions of candidates directly; rather, it is directed to the federal employees who would authorize the use of federal property. "The burden is on the federal agency or federal employees knowing what they can or cannot allow," Deeds said.

Last week, when the agency made the guidance public, Special Counsel Scott Bloch cautioned, "During this busy campaign season, we want federal employees to be scrupulous about the restrictions concerning the use of their official position or federal property for campaign-related events or activities, under the Hatch Act."

While the guidance gets very specific about the types of campaign activities that cannot be authorized by federal employees to take place on federal property – "town hall meetings, rallies, parades, speeches, fundraisers, press conferences, 'photo ops,' or meet-and-greets" – it is perplexingly vague about exactly what kind of "federal facilities" are off-limits. Given that the federal government owns roughly half a million buildings nationwide and approximately one-third of all the land in America, ranging from national parks to military bases, there's plenty of room for confusion.

Amanda Griscom writes the Muckraker column for Grist Magazine.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »