The Trump administration doesn’t yet have a legal analysis to justify why it believes it can merge the Office of Personnel Management with the General Services Administration.
Attorneys at OPM are still developing that analysis, even as the administration had told Congress it needed a commitment to merge the two agencies by June 30 or else risk the potential for furloughs of OPM employees.
“The legal analysis of what statutory authorities exist today to enact parts of the transaction are still undergoing,” Stephen Billy, deputy chief of staff for OPM, told members of the House Oversight and Reform Government Operations Subcommittee on Thursday.