A polite tiff has broken out between the U.S. Postal Service and its inspector general over whether a pension should count in determining whether a top officer’s compensation exceeded a legal pay cap. The officer, who was not named in the report, but whom sources identified as Paul Vogel, president of digital solutions, made a total last year of $306,250 in annual salary, pension and bonus, IG auditors found in a newly released report. That would be well above the maximum pay limit of $276,840 for USPS executives holding specially designated “critical” positions, according to the audit, which said the Postal…
Monthly Archives: October, 2012
The U.S. Postal Service has lost round one of a court fight over information sought by a California watchdog agency in connection with a case of alleged electoral dirty tricks. In a ruling this month, Senior U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said the mail carrier must tell the California Fair Political Practices Commission how many pieces of mail a former Los Angeles-area school board member sent out under his bulk mailing permit in late October 2008 as he faced a recall election. The Postal Service failed to show that the information was exempt from disclosure under the federal Freedom of…
The non-profit firm that runs the nation’s largest Combined Federal Campaign has recovered about one-third of the $308,000 it had to repay earlier this year after auditors questioned spending for such items as meals for loaned executives, flowers and a night out at a Washington Nationals baseball game. Global Impact, which manages the National Capital Area CFC, had sought reimbursement for about $294,000 of that total; Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry agreed to return $$102,100 after reviewing additional documentation, according to an Aug. 14 letter released today at Federal Times’ request. Among the expenses that Berry decided were…
Hello everyone. We all know the federal government is undergoing some pretty big changes. Lots of retirements, new technology and the slow march of telework are reshaping the office in new ways (for better or worse). But when it comes to office dress codes are there any changes? Should there be? We would like to hear from our readers about what your experiences are when it comes to what people wear at work. Feel free to post comments below or you can send emails to amedici@federaltimes.com
Federal agencies expect to save $2.5 billion over the next three years by consolidating duplicative information technology systems, buying in bulk and eliminating failing IT projects. Those savings were identified using a new approach – called PortfolioStat – where agency officials review their spending for common IT resources such as email and desktop computers in search of duplicative investments and opportunities to consolidate projects, Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients said in a blog post Wednesday. OMB officials met with agencies’ senior executives, including the chief information officer, financial officer, acquisition officer and operating officer this summer. OMB used data collected for these meetings to show agencies where their…
President Obama said the automatic budget cuts- known as sequestration – slated to go into effect Jan. 2 will not happen. Speaking at a presidential debate last night with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Obama said it was not a policy he proposed. “It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen,” Obama said. The cuts are required by last year’s Budget Control Act unless Congress and the Obama administration agree on a path to reducing budget deficits by $1.2 trillion through 2021. Romney said that sequestration was “unacceptable.” “That, in my view, is making – is making…
Despite maxing out a $15 billion line of credit with the U.S. Treasury last month, the U.S. Postal Service can scrape by at least through March. That’s according to Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees the Postal Service. The commission meets with USPS officials following the release of each quarterly financial report, the last of which was in August. In the ensuing review, the Postal Service “projected that they would be able to continue operating without disruption until at least midway through the fiscal year without any action by Congress,” Goldway said in a statement to…
Three men were handed down prison sentences this week for participating in a scheme to defraud the government of more than $20 million through Army Corps of Engineers contracts, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Harold Babb, the former director of contracts at Eyak Technology LLC, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison on federal charges of bribery and unlawful kickbacks, according to a news release. Babb admitted that he paid Army Corps of Engineers program manager Kerry Khan in return for Khan’s approval on contracts and subcontracts to EyakTek and Big Surf Construction Management, an EyakTek subcontractor,…
More than half of the conference spending reported by the Commerce Department in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 was based on estimated and unsupported costs, according to a new inspector general report. The IG found that 65 percent or $1.1 million of the total $1.7 million in conference spending reported by Commerce was not based on actual costs for things such as meals and incidental expenses, transportation and lodging costs. This also included budgeted expenses that the department could not provide sufficient documentation for. Some bureaus said they used estimates because the actual expenses were not available at the…
For those of you who follow environmental initiatives, the Air Force has been on a recycling kick recently. Whether its recycling scrap metal or trying to reduce waste by using compostable silverware, the Air Force is trying to cut down on as much garbage as it can. And now it has a mascot for its efforts. From the Air Force: CHUCK-IT, the recycling mascot, targets children between the ages of 5 and 12 and is the latest addition to the “Win the War Against Waste” tool kit — an outreach campaign developed to support the Air Force’s worldwide environmental objectives…