That was the message that the leaders of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission tried to put across Wednesday as they held their first public meeting since a bruising hearing two weeks ago before the House Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation where they were taken to task for everything from not meeting frequently enough, to what Congress said was poor employee morale, to spending too much on office furniture.
| Creel |
“We have made some improvements around the place,” said Commissioner Harold J. Creel Jr. as he started the meeting. “This is part of an effort to change the way we are running the place.”
The four commissioners vowed to hold regular meetings — probably two a month — in an attempt to improve management of the agency, which has been without a chairman since Stephen J. Blust left his job in June 2006. The next meeting is already scheduled for May 7. They also plan to reduce use of the long-established notational voting system used at the agency, which was also criticized at hearing — though they also indicated they will continue to use it when appropriate.
The agency has only had a handful of public and private meetings of all four commissioners — Creel, A. Paul Anderson, Joseph E. Brennan, and Rebecca F. Dye — since Brennan left, although they said they frequent speak one on one. Commissioners had told Congress that a federal “sunshine law” for advertising meetings when more than two of them are present, had hampered administration of the agency.
But the committee members were unsympathetic to that explanation and suggested that they just hold more publicly announced meetings.
Last August President Bush nominated Anderson to be chairman of the FMC and for Carl B. Kress to fill the vacancy created when Blust left, but the appointments have stagnated in the Senate. Without a chairman, the four remaining commissioners are jointly responsible for administration of the agency.
The commissioners said they will rotate the job of chairing the meeting until a chairman is appointed.
The meeting was packed with FMC staffers — nearly 40 persons, which Anderson noted equated to about one-third of the agency’s personnel. He said the commissioners should make sure that the staff is not unduly burdened if the agency meets too frequently.
Congressmen at the hearing two weeks ago had cited a 2006 survey of the FMC staff as indicating that workers at the agency were dissatisfied with their jobs. But that criticism seemed blunted by a discussion during the meeting, in which it was revealed that a new survey completed last fall showed the agency getting higher marks from workers.
Anthony Haywood, deputy director of administration, said of 40 questions in the survey, on 11 items FMC staffers offered a rating that was 9 percent or more higher than in the 2006 survey.
And Haywood said the 2006 survey was not all that negative, with FMC workers rating the agency more positively than the marks most federal workers give where they work.
In fact, Haywood said that the better than average 2006 survey results were one of the reasons that he came to work for the agency. ' Chris Dupin
