Administration Proposes Pay, Other Reforms

The Bush administration has put into formal legislative language a plan it has advocated since the start of the year to extend government-wide many of the reformed civil service practices on tap at the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The administration seeks to end by 2010 the general schedule and replace it with a pay banding system in which money currently paid out as across-the-board and locality-based pay would be replaced with increases based on occupation, level of work and local labor market conditions. Money currently designated toward within-grade increases and promotions would be put into a pool and divided up according to performance. Unacceptable performers would get no raises. The Office of Personnel Management would have to certify agency performance management plans as meeting certain criteria, much as it does now for the Senior Executive Service. The plan—which has yet to find a congressional sponsor and whose chances of enactment are very much up in the air—also would restrict union rights in some areas, although not to the extent envisioned under an earlier draft of the plan or to the extent slated at DoD and DHS.