WASHINGTON — With less than a week before federal workers have to decide whether to take President Donald Trump’s offer to resign with seven months of paid leave, Maryland leaders who represent tens of thousands of federal employees are cautioning them against taking the deal at face value.
“I recommend they do not take this buyout,” said U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, one of several Maryland Democrats who’ve put Trump’s moves to trim the federal workforce at the top of their list of concerns early in the new administration.
Maryland relies heavily on as many as 160,000 federal civilian employees in the state, representing one out of every $10 of wages paid in the state.
The buyout offer — issued Jan. 28 with a quickly approaching Feb. 6 deadline — is one of several ways Trump has looked to, as he’s said, take “immediate control of the vast federal out-of-control bureaucracy.”
In both a government-wide memo and a follow-up FAQ website from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the administration said the “deferred resignation” offer is available to everyone except military personnel, U.S. Postal Service employees and those in immigration or national security roles. Employees would get full pay and benefits through Sept. 5 even if they take the time off or get another job in the private sector.
“You are most welcome [to] stay at home and relax or to travel to your dream destination. Whatever you would like,” the personnel office’s FAQ states.
Democrats and the largest union representing federal workers have said the offer may be illegitimate and possibly illegal.
“That’s seven months of paying people for doing nothing. That doesn’t sound very fiscally sound to me, and Congress has appropriated no money for that purpose,” U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer, a former House Democratic leader from St. Mary’s County, said this week.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, another Maryland Democrat, didn’t say he was specifically recommending workers against taking the buyout but that he was urging caution.
“They have to make a decision very quickly about whether or not to opt in and then they’re supposedly to get the benefits down the road. I would just be very cautious about whether or not the Trump administration has the authority to do it or whether they have any real plans to make good on this bargain,” Van Hollen said.
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, went a step further during a speech on the Senate floor.
“Don’t be fooled. He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer,” Kaine said, referring to longtime reports that Trump sometimes refused to pay contractors who worked for his real estate company. “If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors. He doesn’t have any authority to do this.”
The buyouts could have wide-ranging impacts, especially for government agencies that deliver services directly to individuals, like the Social Security Administration, where about 7,000 people work out of the headquarters in Baltimore County.
Hoyer referred to Social Security as well as the Internal Revenue Service while saying he was concerned that employees who are afraid of being fired during the new administration could accept the offer, leading to fewer people at important agencies to work with people in need.
“It clearly will have an adverse effect depending upon how many people take that offer,” Hoyer said.
Trump’s other moves to reduce the workforce have included implementing a nearly government-wide hiring freeze, reclassifying merit-based employees as political appointees and ordering a return to in-person work for those who were working remotely. Another move to temporarily limit public communications and meetings at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services quickly caused disruptions at the agencies like the National Institutes of Health, which is based in Bethesda.
“They’re terrified,” Alsobrooks said in an interview moments after sparring with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a Thursday hearing for his nomination as Health and Human Services secretary.
Alsobrooks questioned Kennedy about his desire to “clean house” at the NIH by firing career scientists who he disagrees with. Kennedy responded by saying some of those scientists should be held accountable for what he believes has been “the precipitous decline in American health.”
Alsobrooks said later that she’s been hearing from concerned constituents, including through calls the day before from two women who’d worked at NIH for at least 35 years.
“These are apolitical professionals who show up at work every day to serve their country, and they should not be targeted. They should not be silenced. They should not be intimidated. They should not be laid off because of some presupposed political position,” Alsobrooks said.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 800,000 federal workers nationwide, has described Trump’s moves as a coordinated attack on civil servants. The purpose, AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement, is to “turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
In that sense, the buyout offer is not voluntary but instead a “purging … [that] will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” Kelley said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later denied those statements, telling reporters that it was a “suggestion” to return to work or resign with a package that was “very generously” offered by the administration.
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