The Congressional Budget Office has said it expects that changes in awards and hiring policies contained in two bills pending before the Senate would be relatively little-used and thus would have relatively little impact on agency budgets.
One bill, S-1580, aims to speed up the federal hiring process by allowing agencies to share their assessments of job applicants with one another. If an agency has compiled a list of candidates based on a rating system to fill a vacancy, under the legislation the agency could share that information with other agencies.
“Based on information from the Office of Personnel Management about the number of job openings and agencies that would most likely use this authority, CBO expects that agencies would not share many assessments,” CBO said.
The other bill, S-742, would prohibit a federal agency from awarding a bonus to an employee for five years after a determination that an employee violated agency policy for which the employee could be removed or suspended from employment for 14 or more days or that an employee violated the law and could be imprisoned for more than one year. All bonuses given to employees in the same year as an adverse finding would have to be returned to the agency.
CBO said that while the changes might reduce the pool of employees eligible for awards somewhat, they would not change the total amount awarded.
Both measures have cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
