March 11, 2008
A summary of daily news relevant to
the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.
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Bill Would Give Retirees Partial Pay for Unused Sick Leave
The Washington Post
By Stephen Barr
A majority of federal employees would be able to cash out part of their unused sick leave at retirement under a bill introduced yesterday by Rep.
James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.).
The employees are covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System, which has a use-it-or-lose it requirement for sick leave -- a policy, Moran
said, that encourages people to call in sick in the months before they retire.
The abuse is probably costing taxpayers $68 million a year, Moran said, citing an estimate from the Office of Personnel Management.
Congress created FERS, as the system is known, to restructure federal retirement benefits. It covers those hired since 1983, now about
three-quarters of the workforce. Most of the remaining employees are in the older Civil Service Retirement System, which is being phased out.
Employees covered by the older system can convert unused sick leave at retirement into credits that increase their pension. FERS does not include
a sick-leave benefit.
When FERS was created, Congress sought to make it roughly equal in value to the old system in other ways. For example, though FERS does not offer
a sick-leave credit, it does provide matching contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan, a 401(k)-type program.
But the differences in the retirement systems seem to encourage FERS employees to use more sick leave. FERS employees eligible to retire used
nearly 35 percent more sick leave than comparable employees in the older system, according to a study released last year by the Congressional
Research Service.
Payroll data examined by the OPM show that FERS employees eligible to retire use, on average, 20.2 hours more sick leave annually than employees
in the older system. FERS employees nearing the time they would qualify for retirement also use an average of 13.5 hours more sick leave annually,
the OPM said yesterday.
The higher rate for FERS employees has raised questions about whether a substantial number may be gaming the system, by treating sick leave as
vacation time. Officials say it is relatively easy to take sick time in small amounts because most agencies do not ask for a doctor's note for
absences shorter than several days.
Concerned that the FERS use-it-or-lose it approach hurts productivity, Moran hopes to create an incentive for FERS employees to build up sick
leave balances.
Under his proposal, FERS employees would be eligible for a lump-sum payment of up to $10,000 for their unused sick leave.
The proposed benefit would apply to accrued sick leave exceeding 500 hours. That would ensure that employees have at least that much sick leave
available for an illness, injury or disability. Employees would receive 15 percent of the value of their remaining sick leave.
For example, a federal employee earning about $75,000 with 1,250 hours of sick leave saved up would receive a $4,000 lump-sum payment upon
retirement under the Moran proposal, his office said.
Moran announced his proposal at a meeting of the Federal Managers Association yesterday. The bill has drawn support from the association and
several other groups that represent executives, managers and supervisors in the government.
In a statement, Darryl Perkinson, president of the Federal Managers Association, said that "by placing a value on sick leave, FERS employees are
encouraged to use their leave responsibly. As a result, the benefit to the government is increased productivity and morale, with minimal financial
cost to taxpayers."
An aide to Moran said a bill will be sent to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate. If the proposed benefit appears too expensive,
it may be scaled back, the aide suggested.
Nancy H. Kichak, an associate director at the OPM, cautioned against jumping to conclusions that the different treatment of sick leave by the two
retirement systems is behind the higher rate of use by FERS employees.
There are more women in FERS than in the older system, and it possible that women tend to use more sick leave because of family responsibilities,
she said.
In addition, sick leave today can be used for more reasons than 20 years ago, she said. Employees may take sick leave to care for an ill child or
family member, to provide time off for an adoption and for the funeral of a close family member.
"We're not attributing sick-leave usage being up to any particular thing," Kichak said. "Times are different."
At EPA, Unions Break From Management
The Washington Post
By Christopher Lee
Unions at the Environmental Protection Agency have pulled out of a long-standing partnership with management, saying Administrator Stephen L.
Johnson has failed to deal in good faith on issues such as scientific integrity and job evaluations.
In a Feb. 29 letter to Johnson, 19 union leaders, who represent 10,000 EPA employees, complained that he and other top managers have ignored the
advice of unionized workers and the agency's own principles of scientific integrity. They cited issues that include fluoride drinking-water
standards, a California bid to limit greenhouse gases, and mercury emissions from power plants.
The agency's scientific-integrity principles, jointly developed by unions and managers during the Clinton administration, call for employees to
ensure that their scientific work is of the highest integrity, and to represent it fairly, acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others and
avoid financial conflicts.
"EPA boasts of the principles of scientific integrity before the Congress and the public as an example of EPA's dedication to using only good
science in its decision making, but refuses to agree to an adjudication process for resolving disputes arising from alleged violations," the union
leaders wrote.
EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said Johnson "has and will continue to value the expertise and advice of his staff at all levels. The administrator
is faced, when given the facts and the law, with making some difficult decisions. . .He takes the science very seriously, and he makes the decisions
based on the science within the bounds of the law."
The Bush administration drew criticism in December when Johnson, a 27-year veteran of the agency, denied California's petition to limit
greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks, overruling the unanimous recommendation of the EPA's legal and technical staffs. Johnson has said that
higher fuel economy standards and increased renewable fuel requirements that President Bush signed into law last year will do more to address global
warming than "a confusing patchwork of state rules."
Last month, a federal appeals court threw out the EPA's approach to limiting mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants, ruling that agency
officials had followed their own desires rather than the law in imposing new standards that were favorable to plant owners.
J. William Hirzy, executive vice president of Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union, one of the union locals that sent the letter,
said there have been other internal fights over the dangers of fluoride in drinking water and certain ingredients in pesticides.
"It's not so much that we're looking for influence over policy decisions. We're looking to have our science recognized," said Hirzy, a senior
scientist in EPA's risk assessment division who emphasized that he was speaking as a union official.
Created during the Clinton administration, the EPA's Labor-Management Partnership Council, like its counterparts in other agencies, is intended to
head off internal disputes and delays by discussing issues such as changes in work schedules and the introduction of new technology before final
decisions are made. Bush dissolved the agency councils by executive order in 2001, but EPA officials maintained a working relationship with the
unions.
The letter announcing the unions' withdrawal cites a lack of union input on the design of a performance appraisal system and a failure to engage
unions before implementing changes in work rules.
"It's gotten worse than ever in terms of the agency just doing unilateral decision-making,"
Hirzy said. "We're tired of it."
Intelligence Agencies Hope to Improve Image by Opening Up
The Associated
Press
By Pamela Hess
The professionally coy American intelligence agencies may be getting ready to show a little ankle.
A top intelligence official says he wants to pull back the curtain of secrecy to let Americans see more clearly what it is intelligence agencies
do, and how they do it.
"We've allowed our detractors to frame the national debate and cast us as the villains," said Donald Kerr, the No. 2 official in the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence. "We in the intelligence community are not winning hearts and minds in the U.S. We're not even trying. That's what
bothers me most."
It was a wistful call to restore public trust in a community tarnished by its own actions and by allegations of misdeeds that feed on secrecy.
"It's not a shady profession at all," Kerr said at a dinner last week sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an association
for intelligence professionals both in and out of government. "It's one in which the participants take great pride. They've invested careers and lives
in it. And we want them to be able to explain that and be appreciated for doing it," Kerr said.
Kerr said excessive secrecy had its place when American intelligence was first organized 60 years ago. But that now works against it.
"We've kept the world out and it's cost us. In trying to maintain (security) we've lost something we never knew we needed until we didn't have it
- the support of a grateful nation," he said.
Kerr said he was thankful there hasn't been a poll asking people about their feelings on the intelligence community. "The number might be
depressingly low," he said. "It's because they don't understand what we do."
In fact, there is a poll, and it may not be as bad as Kerr feared.
Asked their views of a dozen federal agencies in December, Americans ranked the CIA ninth in favorability, just ahead of the Transportation
Security Agency and just behind the Education Department. In The Associated Press-Ipsos poll, 58 percent said they had either a "very favorable" or
"somewhat favorable" view of the CIA. Another 12 percent said they'd never heard of the CIA or couldn't rate it - perhaps a reflection of the curtain
of secrecy Kerr wants to draw back.
Kerr said the "slow bleed" of public trust began with revelations in the 1970s of abuses of power by the intelligence agencies.
"In our community it's become a good news day when we aren't in the news," he said.
CIA Director Michael Hayden has accused the media of dragging "anything the CIA does to the darkest corner of the room."
The last few years have provided considerable fodder for negative stories: Waterboarding. Warrantless wiretapping. Secretly spiriting detainees to
countries with histories of torture. The destruction of interrogation videotapes. Intelligence failures like Sept. 11 and the unproven charges of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"The question we have to ask now - and this is something everyone here should help think about - is how do we get it back? This isn't a matter of
a slick PR campaign. People see through slick. It's about being honest and open in a way that doesn't give away sources and methods," Kerr said.
The concern is largely one of morale, said Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence expert at the National Security Archive in Washington.
"It certainly hurts morale and therefore can lead to people departing if they are being unjustly criticized and never recognized for their
successes. People in the analytical sphere would like to be known for having gotten things right," Richelson said.
The loss of prestige may have a material effect on intelligence and national security down the line, said Tim Sample, president of the
Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In the wake of Sept. 11, hundreds of thousands of Americans have applied to work for intelligence agencies. Intelligence and military spending has
soared. But as each year passes without another attack on U.S. territory, Congress and the White House could decide to gut intelligence as they did
immediately after the Cold War, Sample said.
"In many ways you need intelligence more in peacetime, to preserve that peace, to make sure that leaders understand when crises are looming," he
said.
The intelligence agencies' wounds are in some cases self-inflicted, Richelson said. Taxpayers perceive the excessive secrecy
surrounding intelligence budgets and details like the total number of spy agency employees as arrogance. And historical successes are buried in
decades-old classified records.
Report Cites Lack of Diversity Among DHS Senior Staff
Federal Daily
Some major Department of Homeland Security (DHS) components have a significant shortage of women or minorities serving in
senior positions, said a staff report released March 7 by the House Committee on Homeland Security. The report said that DHS, which employs about
160,000, “has not done well” in ensuring diversity among its career Senior Executive Service (SES) staff. For example, as of March
2007, blacks were 8.5 percent of the Executive Branch career SES, but only 6.5 percent of career DHS SES. Women were 28.9 percent of the Executive
Branch SES, compared with 25.3 percent of DHS SES. But among particular components of the department, shortages were more stark. Among those
components with the smallest percentages of career SES women were the Secret Service and the Office of Inspector General, with 11.4 percent and 2.1
percent, respectively. And there were no blacks in senior positions at the Science and Technology Directorate, the Office of Inspector General, the
U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology unit or the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, the report said. There was just one black
among DHS headquarters SES, the report said.
