For the first time in U.S. history, the United States General Services Administration refuses to provide government resources to the incoming administration’s transition team.
GSA Administrator Emily Murphy is required by law to sign paperwork providing Joe Biden’s transition team with funding, office space, equipment, and access to government officials.
The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 requires these documents to be signed within 24 hours of determining an election winner. Murphy, a public servant not intended to be partial to one administration over another, won’t approve the resources.
By declaring the “apparent winner” of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.
Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.
And they get access to senior officials, both political appointees of the outgoing administration and career civil servants, who relay an agency’s ongoing priorities and projects, upcoming deadlines, problem areas and risks. The federal government is a $4.5 trillion operation, and while the Biden team is not new to government, the access is critical, experts said.
The Washington Post
It’s unclear that there’s a specific action for the U.S. government to take against Murphy. Breaking a law like the Presidential Transition Act isn’t the same as speeding. It’s ignoring and undermining the very structure by which our highest office is intended to function and power is intended to move from one leader to the next.
Just five days before the election, the White House promoted one of their own lawyers — Trent J. Benishek — to instead represent the GSA.
Sources
https://presidentialtransition.org/publications/presidential-transition-act-summary/
https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/trent-j-benishek-appointed-gsa-general-counsel-10292020
Photo: Public Domain
