The House’s recently passed fiscal 2007 energy and water-spending bill includes language blocking the use of funds appropriated in the act for an A-76 study or similar privatization process for Army Corps of Engineers personnel employed to operate or maintain locks and dams.
The American Federation of Government Employees praised the move and said it worked to get the language included.
“House and Senate appropriators are to be commended for their strong, bipartisan opposition to a Corps of Engineers scheme to review for privatization the thousands of reliable and experienced federal employees who maintain and operate the nation’s locks and dams at approximately 200 facilities,” said AFGE national president John Gage.
In another setback to the administration’s contracting efforts, the Senate appropriations committee has marked up its own version of the spending bill that includes a broader restriction on performing job competitions.
Noting that they cost millions of dollars and that in over 70 percent of cases government employees win the competition for their jobs, the committee said that it “fails to see any evidence of cost savings or increased efficiency by undergoing these expensive competitions,” and it directed “that no funds provided in this account or otherwise available for expenditure shall be used to comply with the competitive sourcing initiative.
