President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to appoint Mark Anthony Carter, Andrea Fischer Newman, David R. Osborne, Karen M. Czarnecki, Donald Todd, Jonathan Riches, and F. Vincent Vernuccio as Members of the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP). Mark Anthony Carter will serve as Panel Chairman. The Panel Chairman and Members serve on a part-time basis. The announcement restores the Panel’s quorum of Members and allows the Panel to consider and render decisions in pending impasse-dispute cases.
Mark Anthony Carter will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2022. He previously served as a Member of the Panel from 2002 through 2009, upon three successive appointments by President George W. Bush. He is currently a Partner at Dinsmore’s Charleston, West Virginia office, where he is the firm’s Labor Practice Group Chair. He has a national practice focused on advising employers on all aspects of relationships with labor unions. Mr. Carter has advised and represented employers throughout the United States in corporate campaigns, collective bargaining, arbitrations, and federal litigation involving labor unions, as well as serving employers in employment litigation. He is a former Management Chair of the Antitrust, RICO, and Labor Law Committees of the American Bar Association, and he has spoken at over 10 annual meetings of that organization. Mr. Carter has published numerous articles and portions of treatises on labor law. He received a B.A. with high distinction from the University of Michigan, where he was a Burnett Scholar, and a J.D. from West Virginia College of Law in 1986.
Andrea Fischer Newman will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2022. She previously served as a Member of the Panel from 2002 to 2009, appointed by President George W. Bush. She has served as Senior Vice President – Government Affairs for Delta Air Lines since 2008. From 2001 to 2008, she was Senior Vice President – Government Affairs for Northwest Airlines. Ms. Newman joined Northwest in 1995. Before her airline career, she was a Senior Counsel and Senior Partner at Miller, Canfield, Paddock, and Stone. In addition to serving on the Panel, Ms. Newman’s public service includes serving in President Ronald Reagan’s Administration as Special Counsel to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Logistics and Deputy Assistant to Vice President George H. W. Bush. She has been appointed to the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity and the National Board for the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Ms. Newman was elected to the University of Michigan Board of Regents in 1994 and re-elected in 2002 and 2010, for a term that expires on January 1, 2019. She received an A.B. degree with honors from the University of Michigan in 1979 and a J.D. degree from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1983.
David R. Osborne will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2020. He is President and General Counsel of the Fairness Center, a nonprofit public-interest law firm offering free legal services to those hurt by public employee union officials. He helped to launch the Center in 2014, and he provides advice and counsel to clients, directs the Center’s legal strategy, and oversees all litigation efforts. Before joining the Center, Mr. Osborne practiced law in Florida, where he had previously served as a judicial clerk to a Florida Supreme Court justice. He received his J.D. degree from the Florida State University College of Law, graduating magna cum laude. He enrolled in law school after working as official staff for a Member of Congress from Orlando, Florida. Mr. Osborne is a member of the Pennsylvania and Florida state bars, and he has been admitted to the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He is based in central Pennsylvania, where he is also president of the Harrisburg Chapter of the Federalist Society and a State Advisory Committee Member for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Karen M. Czarnecki will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2020. She is the Vice President of Outreach for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Ms. Czarnecki previously served as the Director of Education at the Law & Economics Center (LEC) at George Mason University School of Law, where she oversaw three divisions responsible for legal education programs for federal and state court judges, state attorneys general, and Congressional staff. Prior to her work at the LEC, she was a Congressional Chief of Staff and a communications advisor. From 2001 to 2009, Ms. Czarnecki was a senior executive at the U.S. Department of Labor where she served as Director of the Office of the 21st Century Workforce, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs, and Acting Assistant Secretary in the Office of Disability Employment Policy. Earlier in her career, Ms. Czarnecki worked at the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, and in the White House’s Office of the Vice President. She is currently an adjunct professor at George Mason University, where she teaches a public policy seminar as part of the Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems for The Fund for American Studies. She is also a member and former co-chair of the Board of Regents for The Fund for American Studies. Ms. Czarnecki earned her B.A. and J.D. from The Catholic University of America.
Donald Todd will serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is President of the Americans for Limited Government Foundation where he is one of the innovators in political research, having served as the Research Director for a presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Mr. Todd used his expertise to develop a transparency system for labor-union finances while serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor Department’s Office of Labor Management Standards under President George W. Bush from 2001 to January 2009. Earlier in his career, he led the American Conservative Union as its Executive Director.
Jonathan Riches will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is the Director of National Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, taxpayer rights, public union and pension reform, government transparency, free speech, and school choice, among others. Mr. Riches has developed and authored several pieces of legislation, including the landmark Right to Earn a Living Act, which provides some of the greatest protections in the country to job-seekers and entrepreneurs facing arbitrary licensing regulations. Before joining the Goldwater Institute, Mr. Riches served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. He previously clerked for Senator Jon Kyl (R- AZ) on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, worked for the Rules Committee in the Arizona State Senate, and clerked in the Office of Counsel to the President at the White House. He received his B.A. from Boston College, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. And he earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.
F. Vincent Vernuccio will also serve the remainder of a five-year term expiring January 10, 2019. He is a labor policy consultant and serves as a senior policy advisor for the State Policy Network, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and a senior fellow at the Illinois Policy Institute. Under President George W. Bush, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2008-2009. He also served on the Trump transition team for the Department of Labor. Mr. Vernuccio has published articles and op-eds in such newspapers and magazines as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Times, National Review, Forbes, and The American Spectator. He is a sought-after voice on labor panels nationally and in Washington, D.C., and as a guest on national television. Mr. Vernuccio has advised legislators on a multitude of labor-related issues. And he has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and Labor Policy. Mr. Vernuccio lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he is a graduate of the Ave Maria School of Law.
The Panel resolves impasses between federal agencies and unions representing federal employees arising from negotiations over conditions of employment under the Statute and the Federal Employees Flexible and Compressed Work Schedules Act.