Make sure you keep checking FederalTimes.com through the day for up-to-the-minute coverage of the White House’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal. The budget will go online at 11:15 a.m. today, and the Federal Times crew will immediately start diving into the numbers to find out who are the winners and who are the losers. (Although given the way things have been going lately, we expect a lot more losers than winners this year.) We already know that President Obama is going to propose switching to the chained CPI, and cutting federal retirement benefits by $35 billion. Check our story from last…
Yearly Archives: 2013
The average federal salary increased nearly $1,000 last year — from $77,505 in fiscal 2011 to $78,467 — according to statistics posted online by the Office of Personnel Management yesterday. How can that be, you ask, when federal pay has been frozen for more than two years now? The increase highlights a point we’ve made several times — that the pay freeze isn’t actually a total pay freeze. It’s a freeze on the pay scales. Within-grade step increases — which bump many feds up to a higher level of pay every one, two or three years — were left untouched…
Agencies were directed last fall to cut a combined $7.7 billion from their information technology budgets in 2014 and propose ways to redirect those funds for priority projects. Duplicative investments, failing projects, help desks and contracts for email, desktops and mobile devices are among the areas targeted for cuts, according to budget guidance released by the Office of Management and Budget in August. Details of the proposed cuts were included in agencies’ budget submission documents and were incorporated into the president’s budget, which is due out Wednesday. For each agency, cuts will amount to 10 percent of their average annual…
May 5 marks the beginning of Public Service Recognition Week. For this occasion, Federal Times invites you to share your thoughts on the state of federal public service. These are trying and uncertain days for federal employees. Their compensation and contribution to the nation are under scrutiny like never before. Public support for federal employees is low. The nation’s leaders are engaged in an important debate on how to readjust the size and role of government. Meanwhile, federal employees are retiring in large numbers. We invite you to write a short, candid essay — between 300 and 500 words —…
The White House will host a who’s-who of legendary soul musicians and modern stars Tuesday night in its latest “In Performance” concert. This will be the tenth “In Performance at the White House” show, and will focus on Memphis Soul. Several artists from the classic Stax-Volt record label will be featured, most notably Mavis Staples, who sang classics such as “I’ll Take You There.” Guitarist Steve Cropper (who played for Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and pretty much everybody else on the Stax-Volt label), Sam Moore from Sam and Dave, “Knock on Wood” singer Eddie…
The U.S. Postal Service’s board of governors is set to meet tomorrow, according to a spokesman, and a thorny choice will likely dominate the agenda: Let Postmaster General Pat Donahoe proceed with a previously announced plan to end Saturday mail delivery this August, with a projected savings of $2 billion annually. Or back off—at least for now—to avoid a probable lawsuit, not to mention antagonizing members of Congress whose help is needed to pass any long-haul fix for the Postal Service’s finances. Among some observers, the betting is that the board will opt for door number two. “That’s the strong…
Welcome back to Silver Screen Feds! This week, Andy Medici brings us the most dashing federal volcanologist to ever be awarded a GS grade: Pierce Brosnan in “Dante’s Peak.” And Stephen Losey explains why our worst fed of the week IS AN EFF … BEE … EYE … AGENT! BEST FEDS: Harry Dalton, U.S. Geological Survey, “Dante’s Peak” (Andy Medici) Deadly volcano? Check. Acid water, poisonous ash clouds and earthquakes? Check. One federal employee willing to risk it all to save the lives of others? You know it. In the 1997 film “Dante’s Peak,” Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) is a…
You may want to think twice before opening that social media account for your agency. In an April 4 memo, the Office of Management and Budget put agencies on notice that employees may be in violation of the Antideficiency Act by agreeing to open-ended terms of agreement for certain websites. You’ve seen them, the lists of terms and conditions that most of us bother not to read. The good news: If you don’t have contracting authority, then your consent on the government’s behalf isn’t binding. For contracting officials, however, that’s a different story. The Antideficiency Act prohibits agencies from spending funds that have…
The now-three year pay freeze has squeezed federal employees in many ways, and student loans are just one of the many burdens thousands of feds face. One federal employee, Jessica Stroop, is hoping to draw the White House’s attention to this issue with a We the People online petition. The petition, which was launched April 2, calls for the government to reduce the balance of feds’ federal student loans by 2.2 percent for each year federal pay scales have been frozen, and for any future years of frozen pay. Stroop settled on 2.2 because it’s the average of the last…
President Obama is getting lots of attention for his decision to return 5 percent of his $400,000 annual salary (or $20,000) to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with soon-to-be furloughed feds. But the White House is not disclosing how many of the people–many of them political appointees–who work for the Executive Office of the President are themselves facing the pain of unpaid time off. According to the Obama administration’s last budget request, the office includes more than 1,800 employees sprinkled around places like the Executive Residence at the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and the…