According to the Pay Agent — a top-level interagency council that advises the president on federal pay policy matters — federal employees earn anywhere between 27% and 69% less than their non-federal counterparts, depending on where they work. Each year, these pay gap figures, which are derived from Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, are used to calculate the locality pay increases given to federal employees. But other studies indicate those pay gap figures are off the mark and that any pay gap is in favor of feds. This week, compensation expert Howard Risher writes in Federal Times that, in fact,…
Monthly Archives: March, 2010
The General Services Administration is out to show that even a relatively new building can become more energy efficient. GSA is seeking a contractor to make a number of energy-savings improvements to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, which opened in 1997. GSA plans to install high-performance heating and air conditioning systems, tune up building system controls such as motors and sensors, and install more energy-efficient lighting. The GSA-owned facility already adheres to green building practices such as using sustainable landscaping, recycling, giving procurement preference to green products and encouraging employees to commute to work using public transportation or…
Last week, Jim Williams announced his plans to retire as head of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service on April 3. Today GSA Administrator Martha Johnson named his temporary replacement. Steve Kempf, the current deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, will step into the leadership role in an acting capacity once Williams retires, Federal Times has learned. Kempf is an 18-year veteran of the Federal Acquisition Service, joining GSA in 1992. Before becoming deputy commissioner, Kempf was assistant commissioner for acquisition management and deputy assistant commissioner for integrated technology services.
Stephen Colbert has some fun with Census paranoia: [HTML1] This year’s Census strikes me as an odd — and as far as federal inquiries go, relatively benign — place to draw a line in the sand against the government. Census paranoia is nothing new, of course, but this decennial survey has the bad luck of falling in a year of lingering unemployment, economic troubles and widespread distrust of the government. At risk of playing amateur psychologist, it seems like a lot of people are displacing their anger onto something that’s really not that big of a deal.
It’s no April Fool’s Joke — Homeland Security Department’s undersecretary for management, Elaine Duke, will celebrate her last day at the agency April 1. Duke told the Federal Times that she has plenty of hobbies and interests to explore after devoting much of the past decade to DHS. She has served as undersecretary of management since August 2008 and has worked for the federal government for 28 years, much of it in contracting. I started with TSA in 2002, and work has really driven my time and energy. I’m looking forward to doing some discretionary things now.” Duke said she…
Federal employees are all too aware of the importance of pay parity. But Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., has set his sights on ending a different inequality: Potty parity. Towns on March 17 introduced the Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act — or as he called it, the Potty Parity Act — which seeks to ensure men and women have equal access to toilets in federal buildings. Towns’ bill, HR 4869, would require any newly constructed, purchased or renovated federal building to have at least a one-to-one ratio of toilets in women’s and men’s restrooms. It would allow buildings to…
The New York Times posted a series of letters to the editor today offering suggestions as to how to solve the Postal Service’s financial crisis. The Postal Service wants to close some branches and end Saturday service, ideas that most members of Congress are reluctant to support. One reader, Jonathan Gyory of Winchester, Mass., suggested an intriguing solution: Rather than eliminate Saturday delivery, why not bite the bullet and reduce mail delivery to three days a week? Half of the postal routes would receive mail on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the other half on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each letter…
It’s very rare that you get to live your dream. I lived my dream. I was the president of the Federal Managers Association. – Outgoing — and choked up — FMA President Darryl Perkinson this evening.
If you’ve watched the Super Bowl or “American Idol,” you’ve seen ads touting the 2010 Census. Fill out your form, the ads say. It’s cool. It will get your state money and representation. What they need to say: You must fill out your Census form. It’s the law. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows only 13 percent of Americans realize it’s illegal not to fill out your Census form. Census forms will start arriving at homes this week, but the Rasmussen poll, released Monday, shows not everyone understands how the Census works. 57 percent said it is not against the…
If two IRS agents personally delivered a tax-due notice to your business, you’d assume you’d made a serious clerical error and owed thousands of dollars, right? Try 4 cents. That’s how much IRS agents told a manager last week at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in Sacramento, Calif., that the company owned in back taxes. Since the 4 cents dated back to 2006, interest and penalties owed totaled $202.31. All for 4 cents. The car wash’s owner, Aaron Zeff, told The Sacramento Bee that the IRS sent him a letter on Oct. 22, 2009, stating that his company “has filed all…