A $15 hourly pay cut is coming for lawyers in private practice who represent indigent defendants in federal criminal cases. The looming cut, effective Sept. 1, will lower the hourly rate for so-called “panel attorneys” in most cases from $125 per hour to $110 per hour, said Karen Redmond, a spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. For lawyers working on behalf of defendants facing the death penalty, the change will take their hourly compensation from $178 to $163. The reductions, signaled in a letter released today from William Traxler, chairman of the executive committee of the Judicial Conference…
Monthly Archives: August, 2013
News that the U.S. Postal Service’s financial picture is improving (although it’s all relative when you still post a $740 million quarterly loss) reminded FedLine of a recent inspector general’s report looking at one roaring success: political mail. This will come as no surprise to anyone who had to empty a mailbox in a battleground state, but last year’s general election was a huge winner for the USPS bottom line. In comparison with the 2008 election season, revenue from a torrent of candidate and other political mailings more than doubled to $508 million, far beyond the initial goal. This was not happenstance, as the Postal Service had…
For anyone who’s keeping count, the total number of appeals filed with the Merit Systems Protection Board for fiscal 2013 (as of close of business yesterday) stood at 34,210, or close to five times the agency’s normal yearly caseload. Of those, around 29,000 (or 85 percent), are furlough-related, Board Clerk Bill Spencer said in an email.
The highly publicized government watchdog report back in May that found the IRS tax exempt division singled out conservative groups for scrutiny often cited internal emails to help back up those findings. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) cited email source material, for instance, in referring to a June 29, 2011 internal briefing paper, which the report said showed how a team of specialists would review any nonprofit applicants with words such as Tea Party or Patriots in a case file. Democrats have since pointed out that progressive groups faced scrutiny from the IRS, too, accusing TIGTA of…
The IRS has called off a furlough day planned for Aug. 30, and will make a final decision next month on whether any more unpaid time off is needed by the end of the fiscal year, acting Commissioner Danny Werfel told employees this week. “We have made substantial progress in cutting costs. . . Our progress is such that we have decided to postpone the furlough day scheduled for Aug. 30. We still have more work to do on the budget and cost-savings, so we will re-evaluate in early September and make a final determination as to whether we will need another…
Remember the 1997 movie, “Donnie Brasco,” based on the true-life tale of an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the mob? Now try to imagine the film if Donnie (played by Johnny Depp) had to give hitman Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) written notice of his right to record their every encounter as the investigation proceeded. Chances are pretty good that this climactic bust (parental discretion advised) wouldn’t have happened: That, in essence, is the alarm being sounded by prosecutors over a House-passed bill that would require federal officials to advise people of their right to record phone conversations and in-person meetings under…
Federal employees were among the hundreds of victims of what prosecutors Thursday described as a large-scale identify theft ring operating in the Washington area. Ten people were charged in the scam to steal personal information, including social security numbers, from dental and insurance offices and other area businesses, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia announced in a news release Thursday. A copy of the indictment can be viewed here. Prosecutors said more than 600 potential victims have been identified, including employees at the State and Defense departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Once they stole…
When David Frankel’s idea didn’t win a $50,000 Federal Trade Commission competition seeking the public’s ideas on combating illegal robocalls, he wanted to find out why. So he called. He wrote. He even filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FTC. And soon enough, the records he received back convinced him that the FTC’s competition this year was basically a PR stunt. This week, the California entrepreneur went to court to make his case, which you can read about on Federal Times, but it’s also worth taking a look at the email exchanges between Frankel and federal officials…
I happened to be at the 35th annual sandcastle competition at Rehoboth Beach, Del., and saw that at least one sand sculptor had turned to current affairs for inspiration. I am sure you all can figure it out.
In addition to the standard two forms of identification, offer letter and contact information, new hires at the U.S. Department of Education are required to bring along a certificate of completion for cybersecurity training course. A recent internal investigation shows why that training is probably a pretty good idea. In a previously undisclosed probe into a 2011 “spear phishing” campaign, hackers targeted senior staff and managed to break through the department’s security protections to steal data from the department. Much about the incident, which was described in documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request by Federal Times, remains…