U.S. Civil Service Commission CSC

Under the spoils system, winning politicians handed out federal jobs to supporters, and each new administration brought waves of office seekers. On July 2, 1881, a disappointed office seeker shot President James Garfield, who died that September, and public outrage pushed Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, signed by President Chester Arthur on January 16, 1883. It created a three-member, bipartisan Civil Service Commission to run competitive examinations and protect covered employees from being fired or forced to make political contributions.

At first the merit system covered only about a tenth of federal jobs, but presidents steadily extended it, often to protect their own appointees before leaving office, until by the mid-twentieth century it covered the great majority of the federal workforce. The Commission wrote and administered examinations, classified positions and set pay grades, investigated political coercion, and later enforced the Hatch Act of 1939, which restricted political activity by federal employees. Theodore Roosevelt served as a commissioner from 1889 to 1895 and became a well-known advocate of reform.

By the 1970s critics said the Commission was trying to be both the manager of the federal workforce and the protector of employees against that management, and that the system made it hard to reward good workers or remove poor ones. The Civil Service Reform Act, signed on October 13, 1978, abolished it effective January 1, 1979, and divided its duties among the Office of Personnel Management, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Supporters of the merit system credit the Commission with building a professional, nonpartisan civil service, while critics have long argued that civil service rules can shield poor performance and limit presidential control.