<< Back 8/7/02 Hatch Act is clear as mud SMN A federal law enacted to prevent abuse of political patronage now too often prevents qualified candidates and good citizens from running for office. Just ask Bob Scott of Franklin. Scott, a Macon County sheriff’s deputy, folded the tent on his candidacy for county commissioner last week after the U.S. Office of Special Counsel informed him that he was violating the Hatch Act. The act, passed in 1939, prohibits certain state and local employees whose jobs depend on federal funds from running for partisan political office and participating in certain political activity. A website managed by the OSC says the type programs covered under the law include public health, public welfare, housing, urban renewal and area redevelopment, employment security, labor and industry training, public works, conservation, agricultural, civil defense, transportation, anti-poverty and law enforcement programs. The political activity of government employees certainly should be regulated. Having state or local government workers out campaigning for a mayor or county commissioner who could be their boss is obviously troubling. Third President Thomas Jefferson recognized this potential conflict early on, and the heads of the executive departments during his term passed an order which stated: while it is “the right of any officer (federal employee) to give his vote at elections as a qualified citizen ... it is expected that he will not attempt to influence the votes of others nor take any part in the business of electioneering, that being deemed inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution.” Reporters at the Asheville Citizen-Times recently discovered that employees at the state Division of Motor Vehicles were coerced into supporting incumbents. Stories like that prove that we need to keep laws on the books that will prevent elected officials from using employees as pawns to do their bidding. But preventing a deputy from running for local elected office because he is paid in part by federal funds is, on its face, ridiculous. If there is an issue worth looking at, it is the fact that Scott would be a member of the elected body — the county commission — that decides how much money his department and his boss — the sheriff — will get. But that issue is not what the Hatch Act addresses. Similarly unclear is why certain employees — particularly teachers and employees of educational institutions — are exempt from the Hatch Act. A teacher or school administrator can run for partisan office but a DSS or Health Department employee can’t. A teacher who is paid with Head Start funds is unable to run for elected office. The differences are confusing and unclear. In this day when media scrutiny and the demands of public office prevent many qualified people from running, the last thing we need are arcane laws that make good people ineligible. And when the OSC is notified by anonymous phone calls from those with less than honorable motives, then the law seems even more out of date. Bob Scott, and perhaps eventually others in Macon, have become victim to a federal law that needs to be revised. Let’s hope the momentum to make needed changes builds before too many good people are forced to the sidelines where they can only watch as our political process continues to lose ground to common sense.