The continued delays in expanding the number of zones for GS locality pay has agency officials and union representatives frustrated and concerned about the impact on recruiting and retention not only in some large city areas but also in some areas with fewer employees but with security-related missions.
Under the GS locality system, there are separate locality pay rates for Alaska, Hawaii, 31 metropolitan zones and a catchall “rest of the U.S.” for everywhere else (except for foreign countries, where various types of special allowances are paid). The Federal Salary Council, an advisory body of pay experts and federal union officials, has for several years recommended adding 12 new localities, based on Labor Department data showing that employees in them are especially underpaid as part of the RUS locality.
A higher-level body, the President’s Pay Agent, has agreed in principle but has taken no firm action toward adding the localities. Rule-making procedures would be needed to set boundary lines and address other administrative issues that would arise, such as treatment of areas that would fall within those boundaries under normal procedures but that already have been attached to other localities. In its most recent report, that higher body said it was holding off that initiative until a year arrives in which the federal raise will be broken into across the board and locality components; that almost certainly won’t happen for 2015, when a 1 percent across the board raise is all but finalized.
At its recent annual meeting, Salary Council members pointed out recruiting and retention problems that are arising due to the relatively lower salary rates in those areas. The council again recommended adding 12 new localities with their own separate pay rates, which would produce higher pay starting in 2016 for affected employees. The cities would be Albany, Albuquerque, Austin, Charlotte, Colorado Springs, Davenport, Harrisburg, Laredo, Las Vegas, Palm Bay, St. Louis and Tucson. It further added Kansas City as a recommended new locality, based on the latest salary comparison data from there.
The council also heard from executives and supervisors representing several areas seeking to have separate localities created for them, such as northwestern Vermont, or seeking to be attached to adjacent localities, such as western Massachusetts. Officials from Vermont pointed to difficulty in manning border protection and intelligence positions, for example, while an executive from Massachusetts said that agencies with offices there are being treated as “stepping stones”—able to hire employees but only on the promise of being transferred soon to a location with a higher rate of pay, which then happens.
