BY RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- If Bill Clinton were a senior federal bureaucrat instead of president of the United States, he probably could have had a discreet fling with a willing subordinate and not risked his job.
But if the liaison had become a public scandal and if his secretary had played a role as a go-between and if agency police had been aware of trysts in the office, he might well have been sacked for letting sex interfere with his work. And if he had lied to superiors or to investigators, his risk of being fired would have been greater still.
Lawyers who represent civil servants in employment disputes say that their clients are routinely held to a higher standard than the one being applied to President Clinton.
If Mr. Clinton were a civil servant, Washington lawyer William Bransford said, "there's no doubt in my mind that there would be grounds for charges. The removal would be upheld and the employee would not be put back in his job."
Some government workers are already asking whether Mr. Clinton's case might lead to greater sexual liberty for rank-and-file bureaucrats. Don't count on it, said Mr. Bransford, who represents many civil servants. "Some employees who get into this sort of trouble in the future will say, "But the president did it, why can't I?' I think that defense will be rejected. There's a general belief that this sort of action impacts on (job performance) and people shouldn't engage in it."
In recent cases, civil servants have been held to a higher standard than the public seems to be applying to Mr. Clinton's fling with Monica Lewinsky.
In 1992, a senior civilian executive in the Army with 23 years of unblemished service was fired for a consensual adulterous affair with a subordinate. Like Mr. Clinton, records show, he argued that it was nobody else's business. Like House Republicans, his superiors were antagonized by his unwillingness to acknowledge a personal failing.
And last Jan. 21, the day that the Lewinsky scandal broke into headlines, the Supreme Court ruled that federal employees could be fired for denying misconduct that was later proved to have occurred. Ironically, the Clinton administration had pressed for that decision. "I wonder whether the president would want to be judged today by these same standards," said Washington lawyer Jessica Parks, a former member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which arbitrates personnel disputes. "It's a double standard."
A double standard may be inevitable. Alone among the 2 million Americans who work for the federal government's executive branch, the president and vice president answer not to the rules governing the bureaucracy but to the Constitution and the voters.
Political appointees -- the roughly 3,000 workers from Cabinet officers to confidential secretaries who serve at the pleasure of the president -- may be fired for any reason or no reason at all. Uniformed members of the military must abide by rules against adultery and romantic relationships between superiors and subordinates. But for the 1.8 million civilian bureaucrats, there is no govern- mentwide policy barring consensual sex with co-workers. As in any other workplace, civil servants are apt to fall in love -- and if marriage is the result, they might invite their bosses to the wedding.
Affairs between bosses and subordinates are another matter. "A senior government executive who engages in a consensual sexual relationship with an immediate subordinate is playing with fire," Mr. Bransford said.
A key test is a relationship's impact on workplace "efficiency." "That's one of the magic phrases," said Joel Bennett, a lawyer who represents federal workers. "Does the conduct complained of impair the mission of the agency?"
If a scandal creates bad publicity, if government resources are used to advance the relationship or if office morale suffers, the "efficiency" of the agency can be deemed to be compromised. Repercussions can range from counseling, to a reprimand, a suspension or outright dismissal.
In the case of the fired Army executive, use of office e-mail to send love notes to his subordinate and make disparaging comments about her supervisor were seen as sufficiently damaging to warrant firing.
