STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Federal civil servants receive awards today. The Partnership for Public Service, which is a nonprofit group, honors public employees who are normally little known. This year, the U.S. government has told civil servants that they are effectively useless. The Office of Personnel Management said they are doing, quote, "lower productivity jobs." Elon Musk said many federal workers were, quote, "literally fictional individuals" and celebrated their firing by waving a chainsaw. The president's budget chief famously said his goal is to put people, quote, "in trauma."
But tonight's awards go on, asserting that bureaucrats are also Americans with names and stories. One award goes to David Lebryk, who came by our studio to tell us his story. He grew up in Indiana, which, as I know from personal experience, can feel like it's far from Washington, D.C.
DAVID LEBRYK: Growing up in Valparaiso was, you know, a relatively small town, and I grew up in a single-parent family. My mother had three kids. She dropped out of college at 19, went back to college and became a teacher at Valparaiso High school. And...
INSKEEP: What did she teach?
LEBRYK: She taught English.
INSKEEP: Oh, that's great.
LEBRYK: Yeah.
INSKEEP: My mom was an English teacher. Go on.
LEBRYK: Yeah. So she was actually named teacher of the year at some point as she went along. You know, that's where I got a good sense of, you know, how important government is.
INSKEEP: Important because he needed help if he was ever going to go to college - he says his high school football coach believed Lebryk could go far and encouraged him to apply to Harvard. He got in and paid the bills with Pell Grants, student loans and summer jobs, putting roofing on Indiana schools. After graduation, he found a government job and he stayed and stayed for decades at the Treasury Department.
To what or to whom was your ultimate loyalty as a civil servant?
LEBRYK: I know, when I took the oath of office, I swore an oath to the Constitution, and that was always really incredibly important to me. All to - all the way to the very end, it was very important to me that we took that seriously. You know, given my background, I had a very strong - and I continue to have a very strong passionate feeling about the importance of government and how it needs to serve people well.
INSKEEP: What was your job in the final years?
LEBRYK: So as fiscal assistant secretary, it's the senior career official at Treasury. And this is one of those things where, you know, we prided ourselves on not being a household name. It's kind of like the electricity - if it works, you don't really notice it. If it doesn't work, well, then you notice it. And for us, you know, because of the really important role that we played in terms of making payments - 70, 75 million payments a month to beneficiaries, social security beneficiaries...
INSKEEP: Seventy-five million payments a month.
LEBRYK: Yes.
INSKEEP: Couple million a day and more - OK. Go on.
LEBRYK: And the financing of the government, which I think is really very important, is that treasury bills, notes and bonds are actually the foundation of not only funding the government, but they're the foundation of the economic - worldwide economic system. You know, we really prided ourselves on on time, every time, to making those payments.
INSKEEP: Do I understand this correctly? The failure rate has to be absolutely zero. The United States can never bounce a check.
LEBRYK: Correct.
INSKEEP: David Lebryk says he served under Democratic and Republican presidents. He served in the first Trump administration and says it was a good experience. In the second administration, he was briefly at the top of the department while waiting on a new secretary to be confirmed.
LEBRYK: Probably the highlight in my career, in some ways, was serving in those eight days as acting secretary and deputy secretary. Character in leadership is really important, and integrity in leadership is really important. And I know you sometimes have to make decisions that are not popular, but you have to sort of have integrity in what you're doing at all times.
INSKEEP: So how did these eight days, the highlight of your career, go?
LEBRYK: So really, for the most part, quite well, with the exception of - I think that we had, you know - there were two issues that I think were important, which I became uncomfortable with. One was a stopping of payments and the second was providing access to our systems.
INSKEEP: The administration later fought court battles over whether officials could pause payments or grant access to the Department of Government Efficiency. After much litigation, courts eventually granted some access.
Who came to you? What did they ask for? And how did they ask?
LEBRYK: Well, I really don't want to get into that aspect of the sort of - like, you know, that detail of it, other than it was clear that there was an interest in stopping payments, as well as providing access into the government systems.
INSKEEP: What information is in the systems to which you refer?
LEBRYK: In our systems, we have an enormous amount of private information on people - bank account information, address, Social Security number, a variety of other things. We protect that information by law. Secondly, whenever we grant access to someone, we only do it in a very limited basis. It's for sole purpose, and you have to have passed background checks and have had training to do that.
INSKEEP: Granting that you don't want to get into every single detail, was the request made of you one that you considered to be unwise or illegal?
LEBRYK: Both.
INSKEEP: Neither prudential, as they say, nor within the law.
LEBRYK: Yes.
INSKEEP: And so did you say, let me give you some advice about this, or did you say no?
LEBRYK: Well, as acting secretary, I was ultimately responsible and accountable. So my answer was no.
INSKEEP: I'm trying to recall news reports from the time. You retired? Is that what was said?
LEBRYK: Yes.
INSKEEP: So no one said, you're fired?
LEBRYK: No.
INSKEEP: But it was clear to you, you needed to go?
LEBRYK: Yes.
INSKEEP: Do you think your successors at the Treasury Department, because of the realities of making the payments, because of the realities of the law, ultimately will end up having to do things about as you were doing them before?
LEBRYK: There's a really interesting thing that happens and I've seen over the course of my career, is oftentimes a new administration will come in and not want to do what the old administration did and also think that, well, just the people who work in government really don't know what they're doing. Invariably, they leave saying how impressed they are with the professionalism and the capabilities of civil servants. And so I know civil servants right now, this is not an easy time, but the skills that civil servants have are needed.
INSKEEP: Do you think officials in this administration, even, will come away appreciating the bureaucracy, given that their opening position was, civil servants are the enemy?
LEBRYK: At the end of the day, you're going to own it. And at the end of the day, you have to be able to deliver.
INSKEEP: Do you miss the job?
LEBRYK: Frankly, I do on one level, but I'm also relieved I don't have to face these dilemmas on a daily basis.
INSKEEP: David Lebryk, thanks so much.
LEBRYK: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: The former Treasury Department official receives an award tonight from the Partnership for Public Service, which calls him the Federal Employee of the Year. We asked the Treasury Department about David Lebryk's story, and the department asserts they are modernizing their payment system. Without giving details, they say Lebryk gives a, quote, "mischaracterization of the events at issue," and they also assert that in Lebryk's time, recommended reforms were, quote, "ignored."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
