Federal Daily - December 17, 2009

Senate Committee Clears Domestic Partners Bill

Equal benefits for the domestic partners of federal employees came a step closer to being realized when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved by an 8-1 vote a measure to provide those benefits. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee passed a similar bill last month.

The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009 (S. 1102), co-sponsored by committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Maine, would give the same employment benefits to federal employees in same-sex domestic partnerships that are now provided to married federal employees and their spouses—including health and life insurance, retirement and disability plans, family leave and workers’ compensation.

“This legislation is on the right side of history and is really about equal pay and benefits for equal work,” said Lieberman.

The senator said the measure would add only “a tiny fraction—less than five-hundredths of a percent” to the total cost of the total pay and benefits for federal employees. The cost would be offset with cuts elsewhere in the budget, Lieberman said.

To see more, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ye5hdvy.

:: Back to Top ::

Kelley Criticizes Notion of Overpaid Feds

The leader of one federal employee union says that critics who have latched onto the notion of a federal workplace filled with six-figure paychecks are barking up the wrong money tree.

“The only meaningful way to measure public and private sector pay against each other is to compare salaries for similar jobs,” said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. Kelley noted that surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, confirmed by the Federal Salary Council, show that government jobs pay, on average, 26 percent less than comparable ones in the private sector.

Kelley was responding to a Dec. 10 USA TODAY article which said that the percentage of federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of the federal workforce during the recession's first 18 months, not counting overtime pay and bonuses.

Kelley said it is likely that any increase in the number of six-figure jobs in the federal sector is largely accounted for by the growth, over the years, in the number of political appointees, as well as by increases in the number of senior-level managers. Plus, the professionals that make up a large part of the federal workplace—including doctors, scientists, attorneys, accountants, engineers and others—receive far less as civil servants than they would get in the private sector, she said.

“That people continue to make these nonsensical arguments truly is disappointing and tiresome,” Kelley said. “Instead, we ought to be grateful for the continuing contributions of those who choose public service.”

To see more, go to: www.nteu.org/PressKits/PressRelease/PressRelease.aspx?ID=1510. 

:: Back to Top ::

DHS Integration Still Lagging, GAO Says

As the Department of Homeland Security nears the seventh anniversary of its creation, it remains a badly fragmented organization that continues to have a hard time coordinating its efforts among its components, a Government Accountability Office official told lawmakers this week.

At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee meeting on Dec. 15, Bernice Steinhardt, GAO’s director for strategic issues, told senators that the agency still lacks a comprehensive management integration strategy—and that while DHS says current directives help it to manage its integration efforts, those directives do not have the requisite strategy characteristics outlined in an earlier 2005 GAO review of the agency’s integration processes.

Making matters worse, DHS implementation and transformation have been on GAO’s high-risk list since 2003.

The lack of a management integration strategy leaves the department vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement, said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. “DHS is currently the third largest cabinet with about 220,000 employees and an annual $50 billion budget,” Voinovich said. “That is too big an entity spending too much money to be deemed susceptible.”

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, panel chairman, gave the agency some credit for its efforts, but said more work needs to be done. “I believe that DHS has improved the coordination of security efforts between the 22 agencies and offices that now form the department,” the senator noted. But, Akaka said, DHS “has not yet developed as an integrated and well-managed department.”

To see more, go to: http://tinyurl.com/yg9jmd2 (hearing) or www.gao.gov/highlights/d10318thigh.pdf (report).

:: Back to Top ::