Daniel K. Akaka has a choice spot in the Hart Senate Office Building. His corner office has high ceilings, tall windows and great light.
But now it feels a little sad.
Joe Davidson
Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about the federal workplace that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.
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Walls are bare. Moving boxes line the hallways. The sense that an era is ending is thick.
The goodbye is underway.
Akaka, a senator from Hawaii for 22 years and a member of Congress for 36, is going home. And with his departure, the federal workforce is losing a friend on Capitol Hill.
“I would love to have 99 more exactly like him,” said J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Akaka is retiring at the end of this session and trading the stress and tension of Capitol Hill for the delightful climate of an island in the Pacific. A big part of the reason is to be with his family after decades working a 12-hour flight from home.
“These years have brought along grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” said Akaka, 88. “I felt it was important that they get to know me and I get to know them and to get back with my friends in Hawaii. So I’m looking forward to that.”
He also can look back at a career of solid accomplishments, including, among other things, a strong history of support for federal employees. As chairman of the Senate federal workforce subcommittee, Akaka has been a persistent, yet quiet, force working to better government service to taxpayers by improving the federal service.
“We need to work on making the federal government the employer of choice,” he said, citing the need for better training.
The government remains a good place to work, but with all the hits on compensation and the potshots employees must dodge from Capitol Hill and elsewhere, it can be a headache, too.
Do feds have reason to feel they are under attack?
“Yes,” he says emphatically.
He is critical of his colleagues for “using the federal workforce as a piggy bank. Whenever there is a shortfall, the federal workers are taking cuts. We’re trying to eliminate that. I believe in sharing the costs of government and that the federal workers and their families should not always be targeted. We need to look at the millionaires who are receiving tax breaks as well as loopholes.”
Akaka demonstrated his support for federal employees when he voted against a postal reform bill he largely supported because of its workers compensation provisions.
“Unfortunately, I cannot support a bill that cuts benefits for federal employees who have been injured in service to their country,” he said at the time. “It is simply cruel to change the rules after the fact for disabled employees who were relying on the promise of these benefits. I’m disappointed my amendment to fix this issue was defeated.”
When federal pay and benefits are targeted, Akaka said, federal workers and their representatives “should have something to say about it.”
Those workers often turned to Akaka to speak for them.
“Throughout his lengthy congressional career, Senator Daniel Akaka has not only been a stalwart friend of federal employees, he has been a most effective advocate on their behalf,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “His extensive understanding of issues important to federal workers served as the underpinning of his many successful legislative efforts.”
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