GovernmentExecutive.com

The House last week approved a measure that raises the pay cap for members of the Senior Executive Service.

SES base pay is capped at the third-highest pay level on the Executive Schedule, the five-level schedule on which salaries are set for members of Congress and executive branch political appointees. This year, the third-highest level is $142,500 and, according to the Office of Personnel Management, more than 60 percent of the 7,000 senior executive members are earning that salary this year.

But a provision buried in fiscal 2004 Defense authorization legislation would raise that cap to the second-highest level of the schedule, which is $154,700 this year. If the measure makes it into the version of the bill that is signed into law, the change would take effect in 2004, when those salary rates could be higher.

The salary increase is part of a Bush administration plan to tie pay to performance and the increases will only apply to agencies with performance appraisal systems certified by OPM.

"We've been dealing with pay compression for four years and virtually any proposal that moves this along is welcome and obviously we would like to do some tweaking, if you will, but certainly this provides the opportunity to get a system that we think makes sense," said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, the professional association for SES members. The association has lobbied Congress and the administration to raise the cap for several years.

The base pay measure in the authorization bill would build on a provision included in legislation creating the Homeland Security Department that raised the SES's total annual compensation limit, including salaries and bonuses, from the top level of the executive schedule, which is $171,700 this year, to the vice president's salary level, which is $198,600 this year.

But Bonosaro was thankful that some of the flexibilities involving the SES initially included in the authorization bill were removed before the House passed the legislation. Those included waiving a 120-day grace period that prevents a new political appointee from reassigning an SES member, eliminating a provision that allows a grace period for a GS-15 employee who becomes an SES member to transfer back to their GS-15 position and would allow the Defense Department, rather than OPM, to run its own Qualifications Review Boards (QRBs).

"We didn't see the need for a complete blank check with regard to the SES, but rather a few things that could be tweaked with regard to the SES," Bonosaro said. "To throw the baby out with the bath water without having demonstrated clear cut needs to do that didn't make sense."

The Senate version of the Defense authorization bill does not include a provision to raise the pay cap for senior executives.