Check out the link of the story: http://www.federaltimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013306230007 Search word: FMCS, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

Whistle-blower on leave; culprits off 'scot-free' Jun. 23, 2013 - 06:00AM | By SEAN REILLY | Comments

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service whistle-blower Berkina Porter, shown with her attorney, Kevin Owen, discusses agency

procurement abuses. (Mike Morones / Staff)

Personnel

Labor Management Relations

When Berkina Porter took the job of director of administrative services at the Federal Mediation and

Conciliation Service in January 2010, she figured she would retire from there. But within months, she

found that the agency was leasing a Lincoln MKS luxury sedan with an employee’s purchase card,

spending extra for access to the Golf Channel and paying a company linked to a former employee more

than $20,000 to do work with no contract on file.

In February 2012, an inspector general’s review substantiated Porter’s allegations that agency personnel

had improperly used their purchase cards. But by that point, the agency had placed her on paid

administrative leave as a prelude to her planned dismissal and Porter was seeking protection from the

Office of Special Counsel as a whistle-blower. Under the terms of an OSC-brokered March settlement,

FMCS will keep paying Porter her $136,000 salary for up to another year while she looks for full-time

work. FMCS, which is furloughing employees because of sequester-related budget cuts, also agreed to

cover Porter’s attorney fees and pay her $72,500, which will be parceled out in the form of an annuity

starting in 2016 that will pay her $508 per month for the next 15 years and four months. The annuity — in

lieu of a lump-sum damage award that would have been subject to much higher income taxes — is in

addition to her federal pension. Neither side admitted wrongdoing.

Porter and her attorney, Kevin Owen, said they know of no agency officials who have been disciplined

over the epsiode.

While Porter, 52, fears the episode may end her federal career, others at the agency have gotten off

“scot-free,” she said in an interview.

An independent agency founded in 1947 with field offices around the country, FMCS is charged with

helping to settle strikes and other labor disputes. Early this year, for example, it helped end the impasse

between the National Hockey League and the players union that forced the cancellation of hundreds of

games in the 2012-2013 regular season.

The agency’s director, George Cohen, an Obama administration appointee who has headed the agency

since October 2009, declined to be interviewed or to respond directly to written questions from Federal

Times on FMCS’s handling of Porter’s case, its management practices or whether anyone has faced

sanctions over the case. However, the agency took “immediate actions” to meet federal regulations after

Porter raised concerns about the agency’s procurement practices, including bringing in the IG to conduct

an independent review, Cohen said in a statement.

Check out the link of the story: http://www.federaltimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013306230007 Search word: FMCS, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

“More generally, you may be assured that when an FMCS employee raises concerns that call any agency

practices into question, we take those concerns very seriously,” Cohen said.

But Porter’s account — buttressed by hundreds of pages of records — suggests that Cohen and other

senior officials at first impeded her efforts to make changes and then retaliated. In an April letter to Porter

closing out her case, the Office of Special Counsel said its investigation had found evidence that FMCS

officials “took and proposed personnel actions at least in part because of your protected activity,” a

reference to whistle-blowing. OSC declined to clarify whether it was referring to Cohen.

For Porter, a Virginia native who started her career more than 30 years ago as a temporary GS-3

clerk/typist with the Navy, the FMCS GS-15 job was supposed to cap a steady ascent that included

assignments with the Coast Guard and Justice Department. With responsibility for contracting, property

management and other areas, it was also an opportunity to put all her skills to work, she said. “I thought it

was going to be really, really wonderful.”

What she found instead dismayed her. FMCS, with headquarters in downtown Washington, was spending

about $9,000 annually for Deer Park bottled water even though federal rules generally bar the practice.

The agency’s DirecTV service included an extra $29.95 monthly charge for the Golf Channel. And

although about two dozen of the agency’s approximately 240 employees had purchase cards, none had

the required authorizations or training on how to use them.

While agencies are supposed to go though the General Services Administration in procuring cars, for

example, FMCS was using a purchase card to make monthly payments on a $29,400 three-year Lincoln

MKS lease, a copy of the agreement indicates.

The purchase card making those monthly car payments belonged to Marcus Lawson, an agency

customer service specialist. In an interview, he confirmed that Porter flagged the payments and other

“questionable” agency practices. “As far as I know, that was the nature of the way things were going on at

the time,” he said, referring to the vehicle lease.

“In my eyes, it [Porter’s management approach] was a positive,” Lawson said.

Porter also halted payments to a Pennsylvania company called The Papers Edge, which had received

almost $21,000 for phone system installation and other services in 2009, purchase card records indicate.

But Porter couldn’t find any invoices or a contract showing what the firm was supposed to do. According

to online corporation records, a company principal is Chuck Burton, who retired from FMCS several years

ago. Repeated efforts to reach Burton at the company’s listed phone number were unsuccessful.

Also retired is Dan Funkhouser, Porter’s immediate predecessor as administrative services director. In a

phone interview last week, Funkhouser did not dispute that Burton’s company worked for the agency, but

could provide no details on what it did.

“I just don’t remember, and I would feel uncomfortable trying to remember,” Funkhouser said, noting that

he no longer has access to FMCS records. He also declined to discuss other management issues raised

Check out the link of the story: http://www.federaltimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013306230007 Search word: FMCS, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

by Porter that date back to his tenure. “It’s been too long,” he said. “I have my opinions about Ms. Porter,

but that’s better coming from somebody that actually worked with her.”

Within six months of taking the job at FMCS, Porter’s unease with the agency’s handling of purchase

cards had reached the point that she agreed with an employee’s idea to report the problems and seek

training help from GSA, which sets policy for the program as a whole. When her superiors found out, she

said, “all hell broke loose.” Cohen, she said, told her not to go outside the agency; she was soon given a

four-page “memorandum of counseling” by her immediate supervisor, Chief Financial Officer Fran

Leonard. Leonard and other top managers also declined comment.

Over time, the friction escalated. In early 2011, Porter, who is black, said she learned that senior officials

planned to hire a white man to fill a newly created position to oversee her procurement work. They

backed off, she said, after she filed a discrimination complaint.

After she turned to OSC for help late that year, FMCS officials began an investigation of her performance,

Owen said. In January 2012, Porter was placed on administrative leave and walked out of the building

without explanation. According to Owen, the agency later said she failed to disclose a 2009 bankruptcy

on a required financial disclosure statement, even though the statement, known as an Office of

Government Ethics Form 450, does not specifically mandate that bankruptcies be reported. She has been

on paid leave ever since.

A little more than a year before being placed on administrative leave, Porter had unsuccessfully sought a

Government Accountability Office investigation into the agency’spurchase card use and other activities.

Cohen again rebuked her for going outside the agency, she said, but agreed to a review of the purchase

card program. Because FMCS lacks its own inspector general, he turned to David Berry, IG for the

National Labor Relations Board.

In a February 2012 letter to Cohen dated about two weeks after Porter was put on leave, Berry verified

that purchase cards had been used “to circumvent FMCS procurement process and other internal

controls.” Besides the Golf Channel subscription, Berry noted that the agency had been using purchase

cards to pay for some employees’ home Internet service without adequate justification and had written

checks from the purchase card account for what “appeared to be ‘holiday’ bonuses” for maintenance staff

at the agency’s headquarters.

While FMCS seemed to be getting the program under control, Berry said, his letter also noted that he had

spoken to FBI agents. He declined to comment last week on whether he was aware of any criminal

investigation; an FBI spokesman would not confirm or deny the existence of an inquiry. Owen would say

only that he and Porter have been in contact with federal investigators.

Apart from a part-time teaching job with a private university, Porter said she has not worked since last

year. Despite applying for numerous federal positions, she has gotten no callbacks or interviews. Her

tenure at FMCS, she said, may have left her permanently “blackballed.”

Comments for

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Sharon Kurash · Top Commenter

Instead of blackballing an employee who has an eye to following proper financial procedures,

EVERY SINGLE supervisor who tried to obstruct her should be immediately terminated and

lose their pension. That would send a message to the cheaters out there who try and ruin a

persons career when they are trying to do the right thing. That woman should be overseeing the

Military procurement program at one of the major branches and given a big fat pay raise.

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· June 24 at 4:34pm

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Deborah N Edward Smith · Virginia Union University

Why do we have whistle blower clauses just for the whistle blower to be the one to be penalized.

The government is supposed to be for the people by the people. If the average citizen did half of

the actions taken by personnel in this story they would be in jail. If the head is corrupt how can

you justify penalizing the body. In this case Mrs. Porter is being punished for doing what's right

and we as the people need to call the head into accountability for it's action. We must speak out

because our silence means we consent. Mrs. Porter is just one of many whistle blowers who have

suffer such disgraceful treatment for following the rules. WE MUST SPEAK OUT! We want

Justice!

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· June 25 at 8:08am

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Charles Patterson · Works at US Postal Service

Every employee found to be stealing government monies should be removed and prosecuted to

the fullest extent of the law. What good is the whistle-blowing laws if this the consequence.

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Cynthia D. Washington

So excited about creating our Waste, Fraud and Abuse Division WFASTOP

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· June 25 at 4:25pm

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Ken Huffman · Top Commenter

SOP! Findings of the IG should have carried more weight. Porter's fortunate the involved IG was

from a different agency. Apart from being generally lazy, non proactive, and often incompetent,

they tend to become duplicit with agency management.

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· June 23 at 7:38pm

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Wayne Barrette

Can we really sustain viably this way?

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· June 24 at 1:29pm

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Wayne Barrette

My keyboard on this damn device is going to drive me insane. Viability is what that should say.

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· June 24 at 1:34pm

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Robbie McDuffie · Strayer

This is injustice; how can you blame a person who is standing up for right and doing her job.

Where is the person who's place she took, oh; I forgot he has retired and he doesn't remember.

Ms. Porter walked into a job that was corrupted from the word "go". This woman needs to be

reward instead they are throwing her under the bus. Keep your head Ms. Porter.

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· June 26 at 4:42pm

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Kevin Glover · Top Commenter · Theodore Roosevelt High School

INTEGRITY AND FAITH BEFORE ALL ELSE, NUFF SAID!

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· June 25 at 6:36pm