The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally chartered non-profit that helps keep TV and radio programming like “Sesame Street,” “Downton Abbey” and “All Things Considered” on the air, has laid off a dozen employees and is requiring week-long furloughs for senior staff, the web site, Current.org, is reporting. The organization is also eliminating three vacant positions; all told, the downsizing cuts its workforce by 11 percent. The reductions are largely due to the sequester, according to what a spokesman told the site. Like most federal agencies, the corporation is having to absorb about a 5 percent budget cut. Between that…
Yearly Archives: 2013
Silver Screen Feds returns this week with an in-depth look at a major character from this year’s best new TV show: the Cold War spy drama “The Americans.” I’ve enjoyed watching the gifted, flawed FBI counterintelligence agent Stan Beeman unfold over this show’s premiere season. And after watching its May Day finale, I decided that Beeman is too complicated to shoehorn into a narrow “best” or “worst” category, so I’m going to examine both sides of his character. MAJOR SPOILERS for the first season follow. “The Americans” primarily focuses on Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, two KGB agents who have been…
The Navy today told its employees that furlough letters — which were scheduled to go out Monday — will be delayed until further notice. A Navy official told Federal Times that because the service hadn’t gotten the final furlough policy from the Pentagon, it was putting its notification effort on hold. Unless Navy hears otherwise, it is still expecting to furlough employees for up to 14 days by the end of fiscal 2013. “We understand [the furlough process] causes angst and concern, and to mitigate that, we’ve tried to be as informative as we can,” a Navy official said. “Until…
The Interior Department has awarded 10 vendors a spot on its potential $10 billion cloud services contract. Under the 10-year indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, vendors will provide a variety of services, including cloud storage, secure file transfer, database hosting, Web hosting, development and testing, and virtual machine services. The latter will allow agencies to create virtual, rather than physical, versions of their servers and virtual desktop capabilities that allow employees to access work documents and applications from any device. The Foundation Cloud Hosting Services contract was awarded May 1 and will be available to other agencies. The procurement could be worth…
Scott Gould, the number two official at the Veterans Affairs Department for the last four years, is stepping down May 17, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said in a news release today. As the department’s deputy secretary, Gould has served as chief operating officer since winning Senate confirmation to the job in April 2009. In that role, he “has been vital to the progress we’ve made on our top three priorities: increasing access to VA care and services, eliminating the compensation claims backlog and ending veterans’ homelessness,” Shinseki said in the release. “While we have more work to do, Scott’s contributions…
Raytheon CEO William H. Swanson received a slight salary bump in 2012 but his overall compensation grew by $1.4 million, the defense contractor disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday. Swanson received a base salary of $1.4 million for 2012, a small increase from 2011. But his overall compensation with incentive pay and stock holdings came to $16.4 million. That’s up from $15 million overall in 2011 and $14.8 million in 2010. In explaining the compensation, the company noted in the SEC filing that Raytheon had “strong operational results” in 2012, including an increased backlog from $35.3 billion…
Kathleen McGrade was a contract specialist inside the State Department, but prosecutors say she didn’t live like one. Steering tens of millions of dollars in work to a company controlled by her husband, McGrade bought a yacht, penthouse condo and lots of jewelry, according to charges unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Virginia. McGrade, 64, and her husband, Brian C. Collinsworth, 46, both of Fredericksburg, Va., face up to 20 years in prison on charges stemming from what authorities called a “secret scheme” by the couple to steer more than $60 million to a company they controlled. Authorities said…
Under orders from his board, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe is gamely trying to reopen pay talks with employee organizations after the collapse of efforts to end Saturday mail delivery. Good luck with that. The U.S. Postal Service’s “untenable” financial position “demands urgent action to ensure the near-term viability of our great institution,” Donahoe said in a Tuesday letter to Louis Atkins, president of the National Association of Postal Supervisors. (NAPS provided the letter to FedLine with permission to post it online.) “In light of these extraordinary circumstances, I request your cooperation in reopening consultations concerning the pay and benefits of…
A 32-year-old Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who was one of more than 170 people wounded in Monday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon, was discharged from a local hospital Wednesday. In an e-mail to Federal Times today, ICE said the unnamed, off-duty officer sustained non-life threatening injuries and had surgery Tuesday. ICE did not say whether the officer was a runner or spectator, but said he lives in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston. Federal Times reported yesterday that an ICE officer had been wounded. The Office of Personnel Management said it was unaware of any other wounded federal employees. In…
It’s now been more than a month-and-a-half since sequestration took effect and Federal Times remains committed to following the story as closely as we can. We’re again looking for your help and want to hear from you about what the impact has been thus far. If you have something to share, please email Sean Reilly at sreilly@federaltimes.com or Steve Losey at slosey@federaltimes.com. Thanks very much!