The Nation - News from April 11, 1989

Calling whistle-blowers “public servants of the highest order,” President Bush signed legislation to give more protection to federal employees who expose waste, fraud and abuse in government. At a ceremony in the auditorium of the Executive Office Building, Bush signed into law the Whistle-blowers Protection Act of 1989, which he said is free of the “constitutional flaws” that led former President Ronald Reagan to pocket veto a similar bill last October. The bill’s key features, fundamentally unchanged from the vetoed version, would establish a simpler and fairer standard for whistle-blowers to prove retaliation by their bosses and would give them the right to appeal their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board if the government’s Office of Special Counsel fails to do so.