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Banned
By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page B02
The president's budget, released yesterday, would provide for a 2.2 percent pay raise for federal employees in January 2007 but also would add a new twist to federal pay -- what a senior administration official called "smart pay adjustments."
Under current practice, most of the money for the annual pay raise is allocated across the board, as a nationwide increase, and a small portion is parceled out by locality, to reflect labor market conditions.
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Sign Up for RSS Feedvar technorati = new Technorati() ; technorati.setProperty('url','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601602_Technorati.html') ; technorati.article = new item('Under Bush Budget, 2.2 Percent Raise Would Be Split Three Ways','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601602.html','The president\'s budget, released yesterday, would provide for a 2.2 percent pay raise for federal employees in January 2007 but also would add a new twist to federal pay -- what a senior administration official called "smart pay adjustments."','Stephen Barr') ; document.write( technorati.getDisplaySidebar() ); The fiscal 2007 budget proposes using an additional factor -- recruitment and retention -- in distributing raises, officials said. Using three factors instead of two would provide the president with greater budget flexibility, they said.
Currently, when agencies face recruitment and retention problems, they petition the Office of Personnel Management for permission to pay higher salaries, called special rate pay. Agencies that offer higher rates must take them out of their own hides or persuade Congress to increase their salary and expense accounts.
Under the budget plan, agencies with hard-to-fill jobs could turn to the White House and OPM to obtain extra money to finance higher pay rates. That would reduce the amount of money available for the workforce in general, officials acknowledged.
"The idea is to direct some of the 2.2 percent pay increase money to specific occupations, grades and locations where we know we are having specific problems," one official said. "The total amount could be distributed in a way that makes more sense strategically."
Bush administration officials contend that the government's pay practices need to be overhauled to reflect differences in occupations and should be linked more rigorously to performance ratings. Some officials -- who believe that some federal employees are overpaid and that others are underpaid -- argue that the government needs to get away from providing the same raise to almost all federal employees.
Administration officials have drafted a proposal to abolish the General Schedule, the government's largest pay system, by 2010 and replace it with agency systems that would emphasize job performance and market demand for occupations. The proposal does not have a congressional sponsor.
The 2007 budget plan, if accepted by Congress, would move the administration a step closer to the goal of creating a more dynamic pay system, officials said.
In most years over the past two decades, Congress has modified the White House's pay plan to ensure that civil service and military personnel received similar raises, called pay parity. Although the 2007 budget would provide a 2.2 percent raise to civil service and military personnel, Alex Conant , a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, warned against making any parity comparisons.
"The proposed 2.2 percent 2007 civilian pay increase is comparable to the increases private-sector employees are experiencing. The 2.2 percent military pay raise is the same as is called for by current law," Conant said.
Some members of Congress who keep a keen eye on federal pay -- Reps. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) -- said they were pleased that the president's budget broke with past practice and included the same rate of increase in pay for the civil service and the military.
Hoyer said the administration has "adopted the premise of parity," and Davis, through a spokesman, said "the administration at last is recognizing pay parity."
Those members of Congress also indicated that they will want more details from the administration about its pay package. "We are going to have to look at it very, very closely to see what the president has in mind," Hoyer said.
Union presidents, including John Gage of the American Federation of Government Employees and Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the proposed 2.2 percent raise would not make federal jobs more competitive and probably would not keep pace with inflation.
The president's proposed raise falls short of the requirements set out in a 1990 law aimed at closing a pay gap with the private sector, Hoyer said. But he said the growing costs of the Iraq war and other fiscal pressures make for "a tough fiscal situation, and we've got to work within that reality."
