Administration Pitches Pay Reform

The Bush administration has gone to Capitol Hill in seek of support for its proposal to revamp federal pay-setting and other personnel rules, arguing in a Senate hearing that those concepts have been tested enough that it is time to apply them to the rest of the government. Office of Personnel Management deputy director Dan G. Blair said that more than 90,000 federal employees in a “wide variety of agencies, occupations, and work settings” are under alternative pay systems which use open ranges of pay rather than fixed steps, streamlined position classification and, in many cases, pay for performance. “The positive results and trends across these systems are clear. We do not have to wonder whether they work. We know they work based on a range of widely accepted effectiveness benchmarks,” he said.