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By: FEDweek StaffThe Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has approved nominees for the inspector general position at OPM and four of the five seats on the TSP governing board although deadlocking along party lines regarding several other nominations.
Krista Boyd, a senior staff member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee with long experience on Capitol Hill in federal workplace matters would become the IG at OPM—a position that has been filled only on an acting basis for six years, behind only the position at DoD in terms of time without a confirmed IG.
One of the approved TSP nominees is Dana Bilyeu, executive director of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, is a current board member who would be getting another term. Also approved were three others from the financial and retirement programs sectors. However, the vote on a fifth nominee resulted in a tie in the evenly split committee; under Senate rules the nomination still could move to a floor vote on confirmation but special procedures would have to be used.
That also was the case regarding two nominations for the FLRA. One would be for another term for current chairman Ernest DuBester, the sole Democrat on the FLRA board, who dissented from a series of rulings and policy decisions in recent years in favor of management by the two-member Republican majority. The other would be Kurt Rumsfeld currently chief counsel to DuBester to become FLRA general counsel, a position that determines which complaints between labor and management—usually filed by the former against the latter—are decided by the FLRA board.
Another FLRA nomination already pending before the full Senate would change the board to Democratic control by replacing one of the Republican members, who has been serving on an extension. That nominee is Susan Tsui Grundmann, who chaired the MSPB during the Obama administration and previously was the general counsel of the NFFE union.
Meanwhile, the committee approved: S-3650, to require that the information in the “Plum Book”—currently posted only once every four years on politically-filled positions and certain other senior positions including career SES—be posted on a central public website and updated regularly; S-3868, to address an issue that has arisen related to future retirement benefits for certain CBP officers related to coverage under special retirement provisions for law enforcement officers; and S-3897, to require agencies to develop inventories of legacy IT systems and produce modernization plans to update or replace them, under guidance OMB would have to issue.
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