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Washington, D.C.—The Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee have joined the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in expressing their strong opposition to the nomination of a senior Treasury Department official to represent Internal Revenue Service employees on the public-private IRS Oversight Board.

In a letter to President Bush, the nine senators have called “unacceptable” his current nomination of Donald V. Hammond, Deputy Undersecretary of the Treasury, as a member of the board and have asked the president to reconsider. The Oversight Board, which was created as part of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, plays an important role in reviewing IRS operations and policies and in making recommendations for improvements, including on the agency’s budget.

The senators said that as the portion of the restructuring legislation dealing with the board was under discussion, “Congress carefully weighed its composition and affirmatively decided that one member should represent the views of the workers at the IRS since the views of management would be provided by the Commissioner of the IRS and the Secretary of the Treasury.”

They said the Hammond nomination “deviates from this negotiated balance and therefore is unacceptable.”

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley welcomed the senators’ opposition to the president’s choice for the board. “IRS employees deserve a meaningful voice on this body,” she said, noting that the clear language of the statute setting up the board “refers to the appointment of either a rank-and-file IRS employee or employee representative.”

The nine senators signing the letter to Mr. Bush are: Max Baucus (D-Mont.), ranking member of the Finance Committee; and committee members Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), John D. Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Neb.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

They reminded Mr. Bush that both the House and Senate approved IRS restructuring bills containing language reserving a seat for an ‘employee representative.’ During the conference on this measure, they said, the language was modified to also allow the president to nominate a ‘full-time federal employee or a representative of employees.’

“This distinction was made,” they wrote, “to clarify that the representative of the IRS could in fact be a federal employee and not just someone hired to represent the IRS workers by the workers themselves. It was never intended that this would reflect a change in the overwhelming view of Congress that the workers at IRS should have someone representing them on the board.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including 94,000 in the IRS.