Federal employees rarely have an opportunity to confront their boss — the president — on specific issues. But a worker set to leave the government next month did so this week.
During a town hall meeting sponsored by CBS’s “The Early Show” that aired Thursday, Karin Korpowski-Gallo, a spokeswoman for the National Zoo, told President Obama that she’s losing her job in four weeks because of budget cuts.
“Just under three years ago, I took a job with the federal government, thinking it was a secure job,” Korpowski-Gallo told Obama during the town hall, which was taped Wednesday at the Newseum.
Korpowski-Gallo, who is seven months pregnant and building a house with her husband, told Obama, “I’m scared about what I — what my future holds. I definitely need a job. And — I just wonder: What would you do, if you were me?”
“Workers like you, for the federal, state and local governments, are so important for our vital services,” Obama told Korpowski-Gallo. “And it frustrates me sometimes when people talk about ‘government jobs’ as if somehow those are worth less than private-sector jobs. I — I think there’s nothing more important than working on behalf of the American people.”
“Well, I — I thought that — I’d be more important and secure,” Korpowski-Gallo said, cutting him off.
“I agree with you,” Obama said. “I think the challenge has been that in some of these negotiations to try to reduce the deficit, I think the feeling — particularly on the part of some folk on the other side of the aisle — has been that we want to just cut and cut and cut.”
The unemployment rate remains high partly because government offices are still laying off workers to shore up budgets, Obama said. He noted that he froze the pay of West Wing staffers and that all federal workers are in the middle of a two-year pay freeze.
“The reason we did that was so we don’t have to cut as many workers as we try to get control of our debt and our deficit,” Obama said.
Although the president didn’t promise to investigate Korpowski-Gallo’s status, he suggested they should speak after the town hall.
They didn’t speak again at the Newseum, but Korpowski-Gallo exchanged contact information with Obama aide Reggie Love. By midday Thursday, she received a call from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco.
“The first thing she said to me is . . . ‘I got your information from the president, and I’m calling and wanted to know how you’re doing and how can I help you,’ ” Korpowski-Gallo said Thursday.
No job was promised, Korpowski-Gallo said, but Mastromonaco asked for her resume.
“I called Karin this morning, told her I’d heard about her from [the president] and that I wanted to follow up to see how, if possible, we could try and help,” Mastromonaco said. “We had a nice talk.”
Korpowski-Gallo said she was invited to attend the town hall by a CBS News producer.
“I didn’t go there to throw the zoo under the bus. I had an opportunity to ask the president [about] what’s happening with me,” she said.
Seven zoo employees are slated to lose their jobs next month because of a $500,000 operating deficit, according to Carol Fiertz, the zoo’s associate director of finance and administration. The layoffs are the result of budget shortfalls in recent years and not a direct result of the $35 billion in federal spending cuts approved last month, she said.
“Clearly everyone is trying to achieve a targeted savings in fiscal year 2012,” Fiertz said. “We’re one federal unit trying to live within our means.”
At the beginning of fiscal 2011, Fiertz said the zoo employed 228 federal employees and 36 workers whose salaries are paid by trusts and contracts funded by outside donors. Dozens of maintenance staffers and police officers assigned to the zoo are paid from the Smithsonian Institution’s budget.
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