Over a year after the Office of Personnel Management proposed
giving itself broad authority to establish and maintain a
pay and retirement system for all federal law enforcement
officers, House and Senate Republicans have released a
concept paper outlining a broad new system that could form
the basis of draft legislation.
The paper, prepared by majority staff of both the House and
Senate federal workforce subcommittees, said the current
system governing pay and benefits for federal LEOs, “is built
on an inflexible patchwork of outdated concepts.”
It called for bringing all federal law enforcement officers
under one system similar to those being put in place in the
departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
Those new systems will cover about half of all federal LEOs
– about 54,000 officers – leaving the other half in other
systems, which according to the paper could, “create several
unintended consequences, including, adversely impacting
staffing, employee morale, and agency budgets.”
John Gage, President of the American Federation of Government
Employees balked at the idea of expanding the reforms
underway at DHS and DoD, singling out the issue of
pay-for-performance. “The problem with pay-for-performance
in law enforcement is that it discourages teamwork which
often is the most critical element of success in this field,”
he said.
According to the paper, changing the personnel system for LEOs
could also require “adjustments” to the labor-management
relations, adverse actions, and appeals chapters in U.S. code,
title 5. The committees requested comments from the
stakeholder community on what changes could be necessary to
chapters 71, 75, and 77.
Gage called the suggestion that title 5 could need to be
changed “troubling.”
