FederalDaily - June 26, 2007
Union: FAA Pouring OT Money into Atlanta Facility
The Atlanta Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility is so short-staffed that Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) officials recently poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of overtime money into
the facility rather than hire additional controllers, said the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
(NATCA). There are 71 fully certified controllers currently on board—short of the 80-98 controllers
FAA says it needs for the facility, but well below the level of 104 controllers that NATCA and the
agency had previously agreed upon, the union said in a June 21 statement. From October 2006 to March
2007, FAA spent $865,000 at Atlanta TRACON, about seven times the amount of overtime spent in the same
six-month period in 2005-06, said NATCA Atlanta TRACON representative Jim Allerdice. FAA officials
have also decided, beginning on June 24, to close one large sector of Atlanta airspace one hour early
every night and a second large sector of airspace two hours early every night due to staffing shortages,
which the agency is now calling a “resource management problem,” Allerdice said. To see
more, go to: www.natca.org/mediacenter/press-release-detail.aspx?id=435
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IRS Joins GSA Effort in Producing Employee ID Cards
In response to a Treasury Department Inspector General audit, the IRS said it now will seek the General
Services Administration’s (GSA) help in producing employee identification cards by a pending
2008 deadline. The audit, dated June 20, noted that the IRS was woefully behind and did not plan to
have the ID card process completed until 2010, about two years after the Office of Management and Budget-mandated
deadline. Also, IRS officials failed to show that it could issue the ID cards at a lower price than
GSA, the report said. The new cards are a result of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which
said all agencies must verify employees’ identities and issue them ID cards. The IRS, like a
number of other agencies, had decided to produce its own cards rather than join in the GSA shared-services
offering. But, Daniel Galik, IRS chief of mission assurance and security services, said the IRS was
convinced by the audit to abandon its solo effort and join the GSA offering. To see more, go to: http://www.treas.gov/tigta/auditreports/2007reports/200720110fr.pdf
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Senators Seek Review of Armed Forces Discharge Process
A bipartisan group of senators has asked DoD Secretary Robert Gates to launch a review of the military’s
personality disorder discharge process following published reports that the procedure is being used
to avoid paying disability and medical benefits. Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., Kit Bond, R-Mo.,
and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asked Gates to look into reports that the medical diagnosis is being used
as an excuse to discharge servicemembers with service-connected injuries to avoid paying benefits.
Specifically, the senators ask that Gates conduct an independent review of the discharge process, implement
appropriate measures to prevent abuse and support the creation of a DoD Special Discharge Review Board
to assist in reviewing petitions from military personnel who have already been discharged. “It
seems our troops are facing an enemy overseas and then a bureaucratic enemy at home,” said Mikulski.
To see more, go to: http://mikulski.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=277594
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