Terry Gerton National Whistleblower Day gives us a chance to kind of reflect on the role that whistleblowers play in government. As you sit in the Office of Special Counsel now and look back over your tenure, what do you think the big lessons are for how this administration and the government more broadly is treating and interested in the input from whistleblowers?

Charles Baldis Well, I think they’ve been a lot more responsive than some people would have anticipated. We’ve had some excellent closures in some cases where various agencies have taken corrective action on whistleblower disclosures that needed corrective actions. And I think there has been a recognition that whistleblowers are a critical safeguard. They help ensure agencies remain responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. Over the last year, the Office of Special Counsel in particular has worked with numerous whistleblowers to uncover waste and deliver significant corrective actions and cost savings across the federal government.

Terry Gerton One of the things that you all have put out is a relatively new resource called the Public Files webpage. Tell us a little bit about what that is, why you set it up, and what you’re doing with it.

Charles Baldis Well, once a disclosure matter is closed, redacted versions of the referral letter, the agency report, the whistleblower’s comments, and our determination are posted on our public files page at osc.gov/cases. This fulfills the statutory transparency requirement while protecting the whistle blower’s identity and any sensitive information. We don’t publicize matters mid-investigation. The public files resource lets the public and Congress see the results of the process without compromising confidentiality or due process. It reinforces that the system is open and accountable.

Terry Gerton What do you want federal employees to find out as they look at that information?

Charles Baldis We want them to find out that OSC is a safe, independent, and confidential channel, that federal employees or former employees or applicants can disclose information they reasonably believe evidences any of the six categories, meaning, number one, a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, number two, gross mismanagement, number three, a gross waste of funds, number four, an abuse of authority, number five, a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety, or number six, censorship related to scientific research or analysis. And I think federal employees can look at our public files and see some of our cases as examples of the types of whistleblower disclosures that are really meritorious, but they can also be on the lookout for.

Terry Gerton And as you and your office look across the files, are there any trends that you noticed over the past few months? Any particular areas that are getting a lot of attention?

Charles Baldis Well, OSC’s caseload and outcomes have remained steady in the sense that we continue to meet our statutory deadlines and deliver strong results. But in terms of the types of disclosures that we receive that meet the statutory threshold, I would say those have actually been fairly consistent. The vast majority are non-partisan. The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to lead the pack. They generate the largest share of cases, which is understandable given its size and public facing mission. And the VA has the most employees of any federal agency outside of the military after all. And that’s why we’ve also put in place a streamlined system of monthly status calls with the VA to keep those matters moving. Across agencies, we see a broad range of disclosures, aviation safety, veterans’ health, environmental compliance, and pure waste of taxpayer funds. I think the consistent lesson is that when employees trust the process, they are able to surface problems that lead to meaningful reforms.

Terry Gerton Charles Baldis is chief counsel of the Office of Special Counsel. So Mr. Baldis, let’s just think about what folks are seeing there. For someone who might be considering a disclosure, what separates a complaint that gets traction from one that’s harder to investigate?

Charles Baldis Well, a complaint that gets traction is, first of all, I think we do have to distinguish between disclosures and complaints, which are disclosures are when a whistleblower has a matter that fits into one of those six categories of violation of law, business management, and so forth. And a complaint is what we refer to as a complaint brought under prohibited personnel practice matter, so, whistleblower retaliation. And in that case, a whistleblower disclosure has already been made or is believed to been made and the agency has taken an inappropriate personnel action in response to that. With regard to disclosures, which is, I believe, what you’re asking about, typically it’s going to be one where we have enough to say, okay, this is real. This isn’t just speculation. This isn’t just fear. There’s something concrete that we can look to, or a concrete expenditure that just doesn’t make any sense, a concrete violation of law that we can point to when we have the specific law in front of us, or someone taking an action that there’s clear evidence of that goes beyond the authority of the agency or there’s some sort of conflict or other wrongdoing involved with the action that’s been taken but I think that it’s fairly intuitive once you start looking at some of the cases that we’ve seen and i think i’m happy to give a couple of examples here if you’d like.

Terry Gerton Please do.

For one thing, we do regularly put out press releases covering some of our most significant disclosures of cases, so people can go to our website and see that. Osc.gov and click on the press releases tab. One of the most significant cases we’ve closed this year comes from the FAA. It really is a textbook public safety disclosure. An FAA medical officer reported that understaffing in the Office of Aerospace Medicine had created dangerous backlogs. There weren’t enough medical officers to check pilots and air traffic controllers’ health paperwork. So when something looks off on a medical form, like a possible health issue, the review sits in a long backlog. And because of the way hundreds of pilots kept flying with certificates that might not have been fully cleared, some people stopped reporting illnesses, injuries, or new medicines because they didn’t want to be grounded by a delay and new air traffic controllers had to wait longer for medical approval, which slowed down hiring and left fewer people controlling the skies. And the FAA’s investigation confirmed this problem. They ended up hiring 26 additional medical officers. Which was a 40% increase, and they put new efficiency measures in place. This was a real example of where public safety was being threatened, a whistleblower came forward, and the agency responded and fixed the problem. And I think it’s a great example that people can look to for the type of disclosure that makes it all the way.

Terry Gerton That’s very helpful. And you also mentioned how important it is that whistleblowers trust the process. What are you doing there to help in that arena?

Charles Baldis Well, we try to handle every whistleblower case with respect, with confidentiality, and to treat them as well as we can treat them in taking their complaints or disclosures into consideration. Our attorneys are well trained in evaluating cases, and we will never betray a whistleblower. And I don’t think that there’s ever been a case where we could even be accused of that. And so I think that all we can do to increase trust is to do our job as well as possible. And we also have another component of our operations under 5 USC 2302C for certification purposes where we train agencies. And this is where we can help get the word out and encourage federal employees to look to us as an option to come and communicate with us about disclosures that they may think merit consideration.

Terry Gerton That FAA case is such a clear example. If a federal employee thinks that they have uncovered a waste, fraud or abuse case like that, what practical advice would you give them before they bring the disclosure?

Charles Baldis Well, it’s always helpful to put together whatever evidence that you can to make the case as well as possible before you bring it to us. But even if you bring to us directly when it’s not fully baked, our attorneys are trained to help to evaluate and encourage whistleblowers to go back and collect more information that they need to use to put together a substantial likelihood to find it. And so I would say the most important thing is to just assess what you have and to see if it’s worth bringing in the first place. If you wanna put together evidence before that and then bring it to us, great. If you want to go ahead and bring it to us we’ll try to work with you on that. But even if we end up turning a case down, if you think, well, I can do better, you can come back. We don’t turn anyone away who’s been here before.

Terry Gerton And when you think about all the cases that are in the public disclosure file these days, are there particular issues that have the most kinds of disclosures? The FAA case seemed to be a staffing case. Are you seeing more staffing issues or contracting issues or financing issues? Where do you think the preponderance of the disclosures are?

Charles Baldis There isn’t really a single area that sees a preponderance of the disclosures. There’s always allegations of funding matters that can involve a gross waste of funding. Some of those make it all the way. Some of them don’t. That tends to be discretionary in many respects. Whether or not something is an abuse of authority, for example, is sometimes a matter for interpretation. So there might be less that we can do in those cases. But I mean, on the staffing side of things, I would say that’s a regular concern, sometimes with over staffing, sometimes with under staffing. And just to give another example of an over staffing situation, we had received a disclosure from HHS’ Office of Medicare Hearing and Appeals about wasting taxpayer resources because in 2019, this office had substantially expanded its workforce and geographic footprint to address an unprecedented surge in appeals cases between 2012 and 2015. So that surge was addressed by 2022 or 2023, but the staffing level was maintained at the surge levels over the next several years, really until 2025. And now as an appeals body, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals can look and see over the several years what their workload is gonna look like because they can see the current docket. So they don’t need to maintain surge capacity. They know it’s coming. And a whistleblower had come to us and disclosed what was going on there. There were about 150 extra employees on a payroll that weren’t really needed for the work. So it totaled about $30 million in waste over two years. HHS confirmed the findings, they fixed the problem. They used reassignments, they put workers in other places, they used attrition, but they fixed the problem thanks to what the whistleblower was able to bring forward. And so that’s a fairly typical type of case as well, along with the understaffing side of things.

Terry Gerton The pushing the public case files out has been one effort that your office has made toward transparency, but as we’ve talked in the past, that’s been a key focus of you and your team. What new initiatives do you have coming up?

Charles Baldis Well, as far as new initiatives right now, I can talk about a previous one that we had put in place that I think has seen positive results. Last year, we initiated a new policy for completed whistleblower disclosures that are highly meritorious. Maybe they saved the government a lot of money or they prevented some serious harm from occurring or identified a very serious violation of law. OSC will now recommend to agencies that they use their statutory authority to provide monetary rewards to those whistleblowers. And of course, this is just a recommendation. Agencies can do what they want, but hopefully it puts a little pressure on them and maybe encourages whistleblowers to think, well, there might be something to be gained by this as well. That’s one of the things we put in place. Beyond that, I would say at this time, what we are trying to do is simply to evaluate disclosures that are brought to us as precisely as possible and to try to make good recommendations to produce good results for the government and for the American people.