Merit Controls,the Hatch Acts,and Personnel Standards in Intergovernmental Relations

Abstract

In the past quarter-century, close working rela tionships have evolved in the public personnel field among the federal, state, and local levels of government. These relation ships have been concentrated in two closely related areas— (1) political neutrality and (2) the technical dimensions of the merit system. Both neutrality (Hatch Acts) and merit have been mandated in many substantive areas at the state and local levels where implementing personnel is paid wholly or partly by federal monies. Controls respecting neutrality in politics are more encompassing vis-a-vis state and local per sonnel than those pertaining to merit. Administration of the political neutrality requirements, because of their sweeping Procrustian design, has brought to light significant problems in achieving compliance—and about the pertinence and scope of the statutes themselves. Changes in the content of the Hatch Acts to make them more efficacious turn generally on the idea of varying the kind and degree of neutrality required with the nature of the levels of substantive responsibility dis charged at state and local levels. Merit requirements have strengthened fledgling professionalism in state personnel sys tems, but encountered impediments insofar as rectifying short comings in many traditional wellsprings of patronage. Not withstanding this, the resources of the federal government are used with increasing frequency, at the states' initiative, to sustain and gradually to improve their personnel systems.