Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is working to approve a postal reform bill that apparently will deny the postal agency’s request to break off from the FEHB program, a move that would have unknown impacts on its own employees and retirees as well as the rest of the FEHB population. However, it could require that by 2020, postal employees would no longer receive a higher employer contribution toward premiums. Also on the committee’s plate are several bills responding to the GSA and IRS scandals, including bills to: allow members of the public to record their conversations with federal employees and require employees to notify them of that right; allow agencies to put senior executives under investigation for misconduct on unpaid leave for up to 90 days; and bar performance awards for the remainder of this year and cap them at 5 percent of salary in following years. Separately, several other bills have been introduced, including House and Senate bills to give hiring preference to Reservists who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for veterans preference, and a Senate bill to generally end, with some exceptions, the practice of allowing official time for employees to perform union-related duties; a similar bill previously was offered in the House.
