I am writing this letter as a retired civil servant, the daughter of civil servants and the widow of a civil servant. I write to ask you to please come to Ogden and meet with the active federal servants you are threatening and firing indiscriminately. It appears you and your “DOGE” team seem to think you can simply mine a spreadsheet to find problems in the government and turn all federal employees into line items that can “be deleted” — and I can assure you, you’re very mistaken in that approach.

I began my service as a GS-2 (Do you guys even know what that means?) at the Internal Revenue Service’s Ogden, Utah, center. Back in 1983, I had to call in at 4 a.m. daily to see if there was enough work for me to report in; my husband was laid off and I always hoped for it, and was thankful when it was tax season, because they always needed help then. I believe I was as smart as any other person, but I had a baby my senior year in high school and it limited my career opportunities — the IRS was a place I found I could contribute my skills to both my family and my country. My father (an Army veteran), my mother and my late husband dedicated their intelligence and careers as civil servants to Hill Air Force Base. I was taught by my parents to be proud of civil service, that it was a stoic thing to choose, an apolitical path that was more important than the winds that could/would swirl around it. I rose to the level of operation manager with hard work and a lot of dedication to my employees.

Readers may be surprised to find that most IRS employees are proud of their service. It is an institution necessary to the country’s function, and one that takes integrity very seriously. The IRS is often vilified jokingly in the media, and it has definitely been degraded by you, gentlemen, with such ridiculous proposals that have been made for our “replacement.” And I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you, Mr. President, that not a single one of the thousands of government employees who may have had access to your tax returns back in 2016 released them. They held the data tightly in their commitment to the greater good of the country and because it was your private data.

There is a factor about the public sector that I am afraid you are both missing and, because you suck up the bulk of today’s media oxygen, is missing from the current public discourse around what federal employees do every day — who we are and what we struggle with. We are truly servants to the electorate, no matter how much you, the richest of men, hate paying your taxes.

I answered phone calls for five years from taxpayers in need of help, all of them with a fraction of your wealth. It was a very worthy assignment and I believe I helped thousands navigate issues over the years. I will be the first to admit, the job can be complicated by bureaucracy; every day, it complicated matters for me. I can willingly admit that, as an operation manager, it felt as though it should have been easier for me to let people go on occasion. It should have been easier for me to do many things — but I know now, more than ever, why those standards and processes exist: An overbearing executive branch may try to gut a necessary civic institution with politicos, all without even understanding our jobs.

As you should know, the IRS does not make the law; that’s the legislative branch’s job: Code 61, Gross income defined. Congress regulates whether or not you get charged interest on unpaid taxes, not the IRS, who seem continually blamed for doing the jobs that they took an oath to do. As much as you want to disparage them, they still cut every American’s refund checks.

I understand your “consultant in private industry” approach to cleaning a house you think needs cleaning. But what you rich guys don’t understand is that the public sector cannot, does not, work this way. You cannot solve its problems by simply mowing through spreadsheets. And if you don’t consider the human factor that many of us are underpaid, overworked and have serious issues to deal with at home while ordering us back to desks that don’t exist, you’re missing the most important cog in the machine.

It is difficult not to find your current actions callously Vaudevillian, gentlemen. You are stomping around on a stage, shaking your fists with threats, in an attempt to express your power without guiding the people who work for you in any real way. You have halted hiring during the desperate need of tax season and even fired veterans as a part of this failing attempt at leadership.

I am confident that if you come and tour the IRS Ogden Service Center, if you take the time to actually look into the eyes of and speak with the people who show up to serve there every day, it will provide a much more whole picture of the problems that we face in real life and the “efficiencies” we need to work on. We are humans dealing with complex problems and you need us more than you realize.

I am looking forward to hearing from you and would be happy to host you around, or even join your DOGE team! I have many ideas, given my institutional knowledge — a knowledge you should consider more carefully in your failing attempt to make things “great” for Americans.

Sincerely,

Kathie Darby

Proud IRS retiree

Kathie Darby is a lifelong Weber County resident who serves on many community committees, councils and task forces.