unable to retrieve full-text contentAP – The price of gas has jumped 45 cents since Jan. 1 and is the highest on record for this time of year, an average of $3.73 a gallon. On Wall Street, talk has turned from the European debt crisis to another worry: Will higher gas prices derail the economic recovery?
unable to retrieve full-text contentThe Christian Science Monitor – Despite German anger at Ireland’s decision to hold a referendum on the European Union financial treaty, Europe will go ahead – with or without Ireland.
unable to retrieve full-text contentAP – Eight times a year, the Federal Reserve issues the Beige Book, a snapshot of business conditions in each of the Fed’s 12 regional bank districts. The findings are all anecdotal; there are no numbers. The Beige Book is updated two weeks before each meeting of the Fed’s policymaking meeting in Washington.
Last week appeared to bring some good news for same-sex partners of federal employees: A U.S. district judge ruled in favor of a federal employee seeking health insurance for her wife. But thanks to that pesky, politically explosive 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex partners and spouses of federal employees will have to settle for the status quo for now.
Judge Jeffrey White ruled in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that DOMA should not prevent Karen Golinski, an attorney for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, from enrolling her wife in family coverage under Golinski’s Federal Employees Health Benefits Program insurance. According to Scotusblog, White ordered Justice Department lawyers to tell him how they could deny benefits to same-sex partners after the Obama administration switched course on defending the constitutionality of DOMA.
Attorneys for House Republicans plan to appeal the ruling, and it is not clear when or if Golinski’s wife might receive benefits, according to the Washington Post. Although the Obama administration is no longer defending the constitutionality of DOMA, it still must enforce it.
The Office of Personnel Management has been able to obtain some benefits for same-sex partners, but it’s been hamstrung by the 1996 statute, which contains a section barring the federal government from granting benefits to same-sex couples.
Executive agencies must continue to enforce that section regardless of the administration’s stance, which “accords appropriate deference to the Congress that enacted DOMA and allows the judiciary to be the final arbiter of DOMA’s constitutionality,” federal attorneys wrote Tuesday.
Currently, OPM must provide, the same child care benefits to gay couples that it offers other federal employees who meet income requirements. The children of same-sex couples also are eligible to participate in the government’s drug and alcohol abuse programs.
OPM also announced in 2011 that several health plans would be made available to same-sex partners of federal employees beginning in 2012. But, participating plans are not officially under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan and enrollees are eligible for individual rates only and must pay full premiums, rather than the 70 percent the government typically pays for federal employee premiums.
Despite those minor gains, policy analyst Walton Francis doesn’t see things looking up for gays and lesbians in the federal workforce anytime soon.
“Until or unless OPM announces that the courts have made a final ruling and there is no discretion on the issue, FEHBP plans will not be covering domestic partners,” Francis, author of Consumers’ Checkbook Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees told Government Executive. “I wouldn’t hold my breath that there will be any such announcement this calendar year.”
Civilian vs. Military Benefits: Round 2
The debate over civilian versus military pay is beginning to resemble a bitter sibling rivalry: Defense hawks on Capitol Hill fought back this week at civilian worker groups that are < a href=http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/pay-benefits-watch/2012/02/military-vs-civilian-pay/41218>demanding pay parity between military and civilians workers.
While the civilians argue the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal targets civilian pay and benefits more than the military’s, several Republican lawmakers this week said the opposite. Federal News Radio reports:
“DoD leaders got battered on both sides of the Capitol Tuesday, hearing complaints from Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate that the military personnel proposals in President Obama’s 2013 budget unfairly target the uniformed military, while leaving civilians, both inside and outside of DoD relatively unscathed.”
It might not be an apples-to-apples argument: The lawmakers centered their gripes mostly on TRICARE fee increases, while civilians took aim at the differences in pension sacrifices demanded of the two groups in the budget proposal.
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Just days after senators complained of the ineffectiveness of a new software designed to ferret out fraudulent Medicare claims, the Justice and Health and Human Services departments were able to speak softly while wielding a big stick.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors announced that they had arrested a Texas doctor and five owners of home health-care agencies charged with fraudulently billing Medicare and Medicaid nearly $375 million. They described it as the largest case of its kind ever
And it was software that detected the suspicious patterns in the invoices.
Charlie Clark joined Government Executive in the fall of 2009. He has been on staff at The Washington Post, Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, Time-Life Books, Tax Analysts, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the National Center on Education and the Economy. He has written or edited online news, daily news stories, long features, wire copy, magazines, books and organizational media strategies.
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Network intruders with an ax to grind are making it hard for public officials to protect their personal data.
The government’s spending problem means smaller portions for agencies and managers for the foreseeable future.
The federal government’s cadre of senior executives could use some shaking up to “bring in people who are looking for new challenges,” a senior lawmaker said Wednesday.
“We’ve got too many people, even in managerial positions, who are protecting their comfort zone,” said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.
“The federal government needs to have its ‘A’ team on the field,” he added. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we do.”
Moran’s remarks came during an event sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service in which a group of federal officials discussed a new report by the Partnership and consulting firm McKinsey & Company on mobility within the Senior Executive Service.
The report found that 48 percent of senior executives have never changed positions, and only 8 percent have switched agencies. It also determined that only 7 percent of SES members were hired from outside government.
“This is an absolute disgrace that so few senior executives are coming from outside the agency,” Moran said. “We’ve got to get people with a greater breadth of experience.” An infusion of private sector talent also would serve to make business leaders more aware of how the federal government actually works, he said.
Moran and panelists at the event said the lack of mobility within the SES undermined what they characterized as a key goal of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act: creating a corps of senior managers who would move from position to position and agency to agency, using their skills to improve a variety of federal operations.
Carol A. Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, which represents SES members, challenged that interpretation. Citing testimony by Alan K. Campbell, the first director of the Office of Personnel Management after it was created under the Civil Service Reform Act, Bonosaro said mobility goals centered on the ability to move executives around within agencies. Mobility across agencies, she added, “was not the big premise of the SES.”
Mobility, Bonosaro said, “has to be managed intelligently, so it benefits both the agency and the executive. So it has to be an option, not a requirement.”
“I don’t think it’s ever going to be the norm” for executives to routinely move across agencies, she said, because of the “very diverse missions” of federal organizations.
Bonosaro also said the figures on SES members who have never changed positions within the executive corps could be skewed by the fact that OPM statistics show the average SES member has been in his or her job for only 3.4 years.
Of Moran’s remarks, Bonosaro said, “members of Congress have a lot on their plates, and with all due respect, Rep. Moran was not as well-informed as he thought he was. Many SES members, she said, routinely work from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m: “I don’t know who’s sitting in a comfort zone.”
At the Partnership for Public Service event, Joanne Weiss, chief of staff at the Education Department, said a lack of mobility among career executives was a constraint on department operations. When it came time for Education to distribute nearly $100 billion in economic stimulus funding, she said, fewer than 20 senior executives, all eligible for retirement, were the “go-to people for everyone in the agency.”
“There’s not a good bench in place,” Weiss added. “It’s led to some insular thinking.”
Elizabeth Kolmstetter, deputy chief human capital officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said ODNI benefited from having a formal program, mandated by Congress, requiring executives to serve in multiple agencies in order to advance in their careers. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in particular, she said has a strong rotational program.
The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has filed suit against the U.S. Postal Service, OSHA confirmed Wednesday.
According to OSHA, the Postal Service specifically violated Section 11(c) of the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, when a safety specialist at the Seattle Process and Distribution Center faced discrimination and retaliation after providing information to an employee who wanted to file a safety complaint with OSHA.
After being reprimanded for advising a colleague to file a complaint, the safety specialist was transferred to another office, his work was given to someone with a lower pay-grade and he was blocked from receiving a promotion, according to a press release from OSHA.
The suit, reported Tuesday by the Seattle Weekly, is asking for relief for the safety specialist, including payment of lost wages and benefits and compensation damages for emotional distress.
“An employee’s right to report unsafe and unhealthy workplace conditions must be protected to ensure that workers are not injured or sickened on the job,” Dean Ikeda, OSHA’s regional administrator in Seattle, said in a statement. “Hostility and retaliation against whistleblowers are simply unacceptable.”
Labor also is asking the court to order a permanent injunction against the Postal Service to prevent future violations of the law, as this is OSHA’s second lawsuit against the Seattle processing and distribution center.
Labor sued USPS in July 2009, alleging that an employee was wrongfully discharged after she filed a complaint about unhealthy working conditions. That employee was referred to OSHA by the safety specialist who is the subject of the current lawsuit. According to an OSHA spokeswoman, the 2009 case was withdrawn.
While OSHA cannot sue other federal agencies, Congress amended the Occupational Safety and Health Actin 1998 to make sure USPS was treated as a private employer under the legislation.
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, used Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to ask her about the U.S. apology over the military’s alleged accidental burnings of Korans.
The Koran-burning incident has led to widespread protests and the killing of several Americans — as well as loud criticism from Paul’s GOP nomination rivals over the U.S. apology for it. Rick Santorum said President Obama’s apology to the Afghan government showed weakness and Newt Gingrich said he “surrendered.”
Paul noted that those who have been criticizing this particular apology should recall that previous presidents have apologized for similar incidents, and indirectly referenced President George W. Bush’s 2009 apology to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an American sniper’s use of a copy of the religious text for target practice.
Bringing up the scandal provoked by a viral video depicting American Marines urinating on Taliban corpses, Paul voiced his overall opposition to the war that created thousands of refugees in the country.
“Does it ever get to the point where apologizing about the Koran is rather minor, considering some of the other problems we have created in [Afghanistan]?” Paul asked.
Clinton said she appreciated Paul’s measured comments about Obama and other presidents offering apologies “when we are deeply sorry for unfortunate incidents that occur, that were not intentional, and which we know have emotional resonance with people.”
