Over the past year, an increasing number of federal employees have set up blogs -- some officially sanctioned and some not. It's hard to gauge exactly how the blogs (especially the unsanctioned ones) are being received in government's top executive offices, but for one blogger, it may have not been received well.

Michael McGrath, a 26-year veteran of the Coast Guard and until recently employed by a contractor working for the Coast Guard, wrote that he was fired last week. McGrath says he was fired for expressing his views on CGBlog.org, the Unofficial Coast Guard, which he contributes to, that were not received well. In a March 17 post for the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog:

Some of us have spent time in the front office getting yelled at for our blogging, some have the scars of having lost positions due to it and I'm sure others will experience wierd responses in the future - as "Transparency" does not indeed breed self-correcting behavior in the Coast Guard that I work, and have for 26 years (off and on), and the Coast Guard that my father retired from after 24 years of service, and who I lost my oldest son to because this CG was not watching properly - but truly, as can be attested to by me and others, "Transparency" creates fear, it creates explosive situations that quickly deteriorate into chaos as leaders up and down the chain of command consistently over-react and escalate minor irritants into major issues, and it threatens the culture that we've created and managed for over 200 years.

A day later, on a separate blog post on the Coast Guard Report, McGrath says he was let go for "business" reasons. He wrote:

I don't mind if someone wants to let me or any other contractor go because they have to reduce headcount, or some other "Business" reason - that makes perfect sense to me and I understand as a contractor that these contracts come and go with the wind - that's the risk we take as contractors and is the nature of our world.

What I take issue with is that CG leaders over-reacted to and I believe misinterpreted some of my blogs and comments - this drove them to handle my departure the way they did. While I won't go into the details, let me say that there are certainly more professional ways of handling a person's departure, rather than the explosive Friday afternoon yelling session with the contractor companies' senior folks via conference call, then having said contractor company send a letter in the mail to let said contractor know he is no longer employed, then firing off a late Friday afternoon email that in essence says go home and wait for said letter - which is exactly the way I interpreted the whole situation - and by the way all without letting said contractor know that any of this was going on.

According to a recent blog entry posted today by the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, McGrath had been critical of the way the Coast Guard handled an investigation into an accident that injured his son, who also worked for the Coast Guard, and for the Coast Guard's reorganization efforts.