The committee’s action may indicate the position the Senate will take regarding telework in two major spending bills to be worked out after the November elections. Image: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has passed on a bipartisan basis S-4043, to require OPM to set new standards under which agencies would have to track and report their telework rates.
Also, agencies would have to track and report their space utilization rates under guidance that OMB would have to issue, and report on the impact that telework has on those rates as well as on productivity, customer service, operating costs, and more.
That bill is not as far-reaching as one that the House passed earlier this year, HR-6276, to require the GSA and OMB to set standards for measuring occupancy by building and trigger a process for consolidating and selling off excess space where usage was below 60 percent for more than a year. The Senate measure would require only reporting to Congress on what steps an agency is taking to increase usage to above that threshold.
The committee’s action may indicate the position the Senate will take regarding telework in conferences with the House over several bills that already contain telework-related positions, or have amendments pending. Those include the annual DoD authorization bill and the general government appropriations bill, both of which are being left to the post-election session of Congress.
The committee also approved on a bipartisan vote S-4711, to ease the potential impact of marijuana use on federal careers, by stating that past use may not itself be the basis for negative decisions on “suitability” for employment or on eligibility for security clearances, which are required for many positions.
Marijuana has remained in the highest level of classification of restricted drugs under federal law—making it potentially disqualifying to become, or remain, a federal employee—even as some three dozen states now allow use of marijuana for medical purposes and two dozen allow limited use by adults for recreational purposes.
“The federal government must adapt its hiring practices to reflect the evolving legal and social landscape of our nation . . .This approach will expand our talent pool and create a fairer, more inclusive hiring process,” said committee chairman Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.
A bill toward the same end (HR-5040) passed the counterpart House Oversight and Accountability Committee last fall. The bills would put into law some changes to federal workplace policies of recent years that now exist only in the form of guidance—which could in turn be reversed by only further guidance.
The Senate committee’s action improves prospects for enactment in this Congress, again possibly as an attachment to some other bill.
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