Employees at the IRS and Customs and Border Protection should get at least some shutdown-related back pay at soon as tomorrow, senior leaders at the two agencies said today. “You will receive your back and regular pay a full four days earlier than Oct. 28, the day most people would receive pay,” Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in an email to employees. In a similar note, Assistant CBP Commissioner Eugene Schied said that employees there should see retroactive salary payments show up “as early as Thursday.” The two agencies, whose combined workforces total almost 150,000, are both paid through…
Browsing: Danny Werfel
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…
Todd Grams, the Veterans Affairs Department’s chief financial officer, is leaving to become chief of staff at the IRS. In an email sent today to “Friends and Colleagues,” Grams, who is also the VA’s executive-in-charge for management, said he is returning to the IRS this week at the request of acting Commissioner Danny Werfel. “For a total of almost 11 years (over two tours), I have had the honor to serve our nation’s veterans,” Grams said. “I am very grateful to have had both opportunities to contribute at the VA.” Grams was previously at the IRS from 2001 to 2006, first…
Danny Werfel is just starting his new gig as acting IRS chief, but leaders of a Senate oversight committee are already wishing he were back in his old post as controller of the Office of Management and Budget. Werfel “has demonstrated integrity in everything he’s done in the federal government,” Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at a hearing today. “My hope is that he’s there for a short period of time and back where we can use him in a better way.” “He really has a base of…
SAN DIEGO| It’s been more than a year since President Obama formally kicked off the “Campaign to Cut Waste” in a June 2011 executive order. Some agencies, though, seem to be taking the charge to reduce administrative costs more seriously than others, a newly released survey of chief financial officers and other federal financial managers indicates. Although 45 percent of respondents said they have been getting “good results” from the campaign, almost as many (44 percent) said they had little to report, were just getting started, had laid plans to start, or (uh-oh) hadn’t done anything, according to the unscientific survey, sponsored by the Association…
Whether the event is a dinner party or a rock concert, everyone knows that seating arrangements can be a touchy subject. But at a congressional witness table? That, though, was a not insignificant issue at a House oversight subcommittee hearing Friday. The session, dedicated to open government efforts, featured two panels. The first was made up of transparency advocates and federal departmental officials; the second featured just one person, Office of Management and Budget Controller Danny Werfel. The reason–as an agency spokeswoman later confirmed–is that OMB will not allow its staff to testify alongside people from outside the government. While…
Contractors could face suspension, debarment or financial penalties if they fail to return and report an improper payment made by the government…even if the improper payment is the government’s fault. That’s what an executive order meant to curb the government’s rate of erroneous payments will say, Peter Orszag, Office of Management and Budget director, told reporters during a Nov. 17 briefing on the value of improper payments made by the government in 2009. Currently, contractors face no penalties when the government discovers an improper payment was made. All contractors have to do is pay back the sum without interest or…