Monthly Archives: June, 2010

The Labor Department yesterday said it interprets the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow an employee to take leave to care for any child for whom that employee is the primary caregiver, “regardless of the legal or biological relationship.” This new interpretation of how FMLA defines “son and daughter” means that any employee in the United States will be able to take unpaid time off to care for any child he is serving as parent to. That includes an employee’s nephew or grandchild, if the employee has stepped in to raise the child, or the son or daughter of an employee’s unmarried domestic…

Office of Management and Budget chief Peter Orszag confirmed to the Associated Press that he’ll leave his post in July. While not unexpected, the timing could be problematic, as Orszag just this month issued two key memos ordering agencies to identify deep budget cuts. His successor, yet to be named, will have to hit the ground running as agencies file into OMB to justify their decisions.

Government contractors and subcontractors are now required to post signs that “inform their employees of their rights as employees under federal labor laws.” Acquisition workers will have to write the provision into every contract they write from now on. The rule went into effect yesterday, about a month after the Labor Department published it in the Federal Register. It’s based on a Jan. 30, 2009 executive order from President Obama. The president wrote at the time that his order was “designed to promote economy and efficiency in government procurement.  When the Federal Government contracts for goods or services, it has…

Office and Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag will step down next month, Bloomberg News reported last night. No official word yet on why Orszag may be leaving. OMB spokesman Ken Baer said “At this point, we are not confirming anything,” when Federal Times reporter Tim Kauffman asked about Orszag’s expected departure. But Orszag is getting married in September, which may have something to do with it. And the New York Times said that Orszag has told associates that “having worked on two budgets, a stimulus plan and the health care law, it is time to leave while he is ahead.” Orszag’s…

Stan Soloway and Alan Chvotkin over at the Professional Services Council expressed their displeasure with Defense Department insourcing efforts in a May letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Recent congressional attention to the issue hasn’t done much to assuage their concerns. In a conference call with reporters this morning to discuss the Senate and House versions of the 2011 defense authorization bill, Soloway and Chvotkin said PSC supports an amendment by Rep. Jim Langevin that would prohibit DoD from setting quotas for its insourcing efforts. However, two other amendments passed by the House seem to conflict with the Langevin amendment,…

I reported yesterday on the Office of Management and Budget’s plan to review agencies’ progress toward their high-priority performance goals and post that information on the Web. I spoke with Peter Grace at HUD this morning and he said the site will be called USAperformance.gov and he expects it to be live by July. Shelley Metzenbaum of OMB would only say yesterday that it would be up this summer or this fall, so perhaps July is the goal, but they’re hedging their bets on when it will actually go live. Right now, the USAperformance.gov URL exists but is password protected.

The Senate earlier today voted down the latest Republican deficit reduction proposal that would have frozen federal pay raises and bonuses. The tax bill amendment, offered by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., would have also capped federal staffing levels and imposed a 5 percent across-the-board budget cut for all federal agencies except the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments. The amendment was defeated on a 41 – 57 vote. Thune blasted lawmakers for defeating the amendment, which he called “a common sense step toward restoring fiscal sanity.” “The defeat of my amendment was a missed opportunity for Congress to prove they are serious about tackling…

What does GSA think it is, DARPA? I just came across a recent blog post from GSA CIO Casey Coleman, in which she muses on the possibility of driverless robocars populating our highways. “Where is my radio controlled driverless robocar?” Coleman wonders, stuck somewhere in the hellish snarl of the Beltway. If DoD can build a flying car, could robo-cars be far behind? And the more important question is, can we program our robot drivers to honk angrily and shout comical robotic obscenities when another robot driver cuts us off? I lived in Boston for several years and I know…

The Office of Personnel Management earlier this week finalized regulations allowing federal employees — both gay and straight — to take leave to attend to their sick or deceased domestic partners. What do you think about this? Have you needed this benefit to help care for your partner? Or has your manager been willing to look the other way and give you the time you needed for your partner or your partner’s relatives? Federal Times would like to hear from you. E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com if you’d like to talk. If you’re more comfortable with speaking anonymously, that’s fine too.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A leading Republican deficit hawk proposes cutting out federal employees’ 1.4 percent 2011 pay raise, which would represent less than two-tenths of a percent of the annual $1.4 trillion deficit and not even scratch our fiscal troubles. Federal unions holler and decry the effect a pay freeze will have on federal workers, who are — let’s be honest — relatively shielded from the economic troubles facing much of the rest of the nation, such as layoffs. Both sides pull out their own conflicting numbers on the difference between federal and private-sector pay — neither…