Sponsors (5)
Introduced November 12, 2025 by H. Morgan Griffith · Last progress November 12, 2025
The bill centralizes and codifies appointment, succession, and personnel rules for the Library, GPO, and Copyright Office to improve continuity, clarity, and some employee protections — but it also shifts significant appointment/removal power to a small group of congressional leaders and removes some traditional Senate oversight and classifications, raising risks of politicization, reduced transparency, and transition costs.
Federal employees at the Library of Congress, the Government Publishing Office (GPO), and the Copyright Office will have clearer succession and vacancy procedures (deputy positions, 120–180 day timelines, delegation rules), reducing leadership gaps and day-to-day operational disruption.
Selection and appointment rules emphasize fitness and non‑partisanship for key leaders (Librarian, GPO Director) and promote merit-based hiring for GPO staff, which could improve professionalism and fairness in leadership and personnel decisions.
GPO employees gain coverage under the Congressional Accountability Act and standardized personnel rules aligning them with other legislative‑branch staff, improving workplace protections, accountability, and access to remedies.
Appointment and removal power concentrated in a small group of congressional leaders (and removal by majority of those leaders) risks politicizing the Librarian, the GPO Director, and other leadership positions and making those offices vulnerable to political bargaining or turnover.
Eliminating Senate advice-and-consent for key leadership positions reduces public confirmation and Senate oversight, lowering transparency and external checks on nominees.
Concentrated removal authority and faster fallback appointment mechanisms could create instability and more frequent turnover in leadership following changes in party control or leadership preference, disrupting services and morale.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Reassigns appointment/removal authority for Library and GPO leadership, shifts copyright powers to the Register, and places the GPO under standard federal personnel/accountability rules with a new human capital system.
Makes major changes to how the Library of Congress and the Government Publishing Office (GPO) are led, transfers many copyright-related authorities from the Librarian of Congress to the Register of Copyrights, and brings the GPO more fully under standard federal employment rules while creating a new GPO human capital system. It replaces Senate advice-and-consent appointments for the Librarian and the GPO Director with a congressional commission/leadership selection process, creates deputy positions with set appointment deadlines and fallback appointment procedures, and updates many statutory references and authorities to reflect these governance changes. Also requires the GPO to follow the Congressional Accountability Act, establishes hiring and merit principles for a GPO-specific personnel system (with an effective delay), preserves existing labor and appeal rights during the transition, and updates and centralizes GPO printing and publishing authorities for federal entities.