In Your Dreams Department

A congressional report earlier this year said that following federal pay law for the January 2009 general schedule raise would result in an average raise of 19.24 percent–from 31.03 percent in the Washington-Baltimore locality to 12.19 percent in the "rest of the U.S." catchall locality for GS employees outside the metropolitan pay zones. The pay law formula, set in 1990, has never been followed according to design, however.