New Lines, Rules Adopted

The salary council generally followed the new OMB lines, which bring about 7,000 employees in about 80 counties into metropolitan zones; the largest number of them, around 1,400, are in Palm Beach County, Fla., which stands to join the Miami area. The council further adopted new rules for adding a nearby area to a metropolitan zone, assuring that virtually all employees now in a metropolitan locality–either because of the old OMB lines or because of earlier action by the council to add an area to a locality–would not get dropped into lower-paying ones. The exception is a handful of employees in Windham County, Conn., who would move from the New York locality to the Hartford locality. Among the roughly 8,000 employees to be switched from the “rest of the U.S.” locality to a metropolitan locality under the new policy on adding adjacent areas, the greatest numbers work in Larimer County, Colo., which would join the Denver area, certain areas of western Massachusetts, which would join the Hartford area, Morgan County, W.Va., which would join the Washington, D.C. area, and Monroe County, Fla., which would join the Miami area.