The House of Representatives has passed an amendment to
the fiscal 2006 Transportation-Treasury-HUD Appropriations
bill, offered by Representative Chris Van Hollen, D-MD,
that would open the way for the Office of Management and
Budget to revise A-76 competitive sourcing policy.
Van Hollen’s office stated that the amendment – passed for
the third year in a row, this time on a vote of 222 to 203
– gives the administration “a second chance to rewrite the
competitive sourcing process” to better balance the
interests of taxpayers, customers, federal employees and
contractors.
It would allow, but not require, OMB to use the version
of A-76 that was in use prior to a May 2003 revision. In
the past two years, the amendment was not accepted by the
Senate and was ultimately dropped in a House-Senate
conference.
Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, Tom
Davis, R-Va., urged colleagues to oppose the amendment,
which was dropped from the two previous bills, arguing the
current version of A-76 is the result of a long,
comprehensive process.
The White House has threatened to veto the bill for
provisions it says weaken initiatives of the president’s
management agenda, but did not focus on the Van Hollen
amendment, prompting an optimistic response from president
of the American Federation of Government Employees, John
Gage.
He said, “relatively muted level of opposition” in OMB’s
assessment of the amendment could represent the feeling
“that the privatization process must be meaningfully
revised to provide federal employees with the same
appeal rights enjoyed by contractors, ensure that
federal employees must always be allowed to compete
before their work is contracted out, allow federal
employees to compete for new work and contracted out
work, and encourage alternatives to privatization that
don’t have the significant costs and controversies
associated with privatization.”
