Locality Boundary Changes Outlined

Proposed rules from the Office of Personnel Management would carry out decisions previously announced that will end effective in January 2006 three current localities under the general schedule locality system—Kansas City, St. Louis and Orlando—and merge those localities into the “rest of the U.S.” (RUS) locality. The result for affected employees will be that their 2006 raise will not be quite as high as it would have been as part of separate localities, assuming that the GS raise once again is broken into both locality and national components. Meanwhile, the rules, in the June 20 Federal Register, pave the way for three new localities previously approved for 2006—Buffalo, Phoenix and Raleigh, N.C.—and outline the proposed boundary lines for them. The rules also would add Fannin County, Texas, to the Dallas-Fort Worth locality pay area. The result in those areas would be raises slightly larger than what employees would have gotten as part of the RUS locality.