Two Senate committees have advanced personnel policy reform bills, including one of many pending that target the VA in light of the scandals there, and one to strengthen protections of whistleblowers government-wide.
The Veterans Affairs Committee passed S-290, which would reduce annuities of SES members if they are convicted of a felony that influenced their performance on the job. That would be done by not crediting the pertinent period in their annuity calculations. Also, the department generally could not put an executive on any type of paid non-duty status for more than 14 days in a year for disciplinary or other purposes.
Further, supervisors would have to affirm that employees finishing their probationary periods had performed successfully, and dealing with poor performers would become a required part of their own ratings.
However, several earlier provisions were dropped in order to gain unanimous bipartisan support. One would have barred the department from giving top ratings in the five-level SES performance appraisal system to more than 10 percent of executives and the second-highest rating to more than 20 percent. Another generally would have required the VA to reassign SES members at least every five years to a position at a different location that does not include the supervision of the same personnel or programs.
Meanwhile, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved S-2127, to expand whistleblower protections to probationary federal employees, strengthen the Office of Special Counsel’s powers to investigate complaints of retaliation, encourage disciplinary actions against those found to have retaliated, better educate employees about the protections available under the law, better train supervisors on how to respond to complaints of reprisal, and further restrict access to employees’ medical records in order to prevent them from being used in retaliation.
