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On Monday, the General Accounting Office sent a proposal to Capitol Hill that would loosen its Title 5 restrictions and change its name to the Government Accountability Office.

The draft legislation, slated to be introduced in the next few days, would give GAO permanent authority to offer early retirement and buyout incentives to employees. Congress temporarily granted GAO those authorities three years ago, but they expire on Dec. 31, and Comptroller General David Walker wants to make them permanent. GAO is an independent agency in the legislative branch that examines management in executive agencies.

GAO would get a pay-for-performance plan under the proposal, which would help the agency "maintain a competitive advantage in attracting, motivating, retaining, and rewarding a high performing and quality workforce," according to in-house GAO documents. The agency would also be able to develop its own locality pay rate. Currently, federal workers in 31 metropolitan areas, ranging from Atlanta and Washington to Huntsville, Ala., receive special locality pay, based on the cost of labor in each city. Employees who are rated less than satisfactory will forego their automatic annual pay increase under GAO's proposal. GAO's legislative proposal asks for a two-year transition period to gauge how best to set up and implement a pay-for-performance system.

The push for personnel flexibilities at the watchdog agency comes amid intense discussion among congressional leaders, "good government" advocates and Bush administration officials about reforming the civil service system across federal government. Last fall when Congress passed the law creating the Homeland Security Department, it gave HSD's leaders broad authority to tailor the agency's own personnel system for the 170,000 employees it absorbed.

The Defense Department wants a new personnel system for its nearly 800,000 civilian employees and House legislators included the measure in the fiscal 2004 Defense authorization bill. Senate lawmakers introduced it in separate legislation. NASA has spent two years trying to get some personnel management freedoms and recently got union support for their efforts.

Domestic Partners

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., recently joined Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Mark Dayton, D-Minn., to introduce the "Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2003," (H.R.2426) which would give federal employees' domestic partners of the same or opposite sex access to health and life insurance and retirement benefits.

"It's time for the federal government to follow the lead of 11 state governments, over 150 local governments, and more than five thousand private sector employers and recognize that providing benefits to domestic partners is not just the fair thing to do, it's good business," Frank said when the bill was introduced on June 24. "Corporations are not required to do this in most places; they do it because it helps attract high-quality employees."

Frank and Dayton filed similar legislation in the last Congress, but it did not make it out of committee.

"When gay men and lesbians who work for the federal government choose a life partner, those relationships should be treated with respect," said Lieberman, who is ranking member on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "It's time to lead with a new vision of a more tolerant nation and take concrete steps toward equality in the workplace."

COMMENTS

• In Secretary's comment referring to my earlier comment, Secretary fails to include just how long it would take to accrue sufficient sick time to use for pregnancy and childbirth. The WHO recommends a minium of 12wks postpartum, would like countries to provide 6mos and applauds those countries that provide one year of paid maternity leave. In order to meet the minimum 12 wks, a female Federal employee must work for 4 years and 6 months to accrue sufficient sick leave. 5yrs if you include leave for the required prenatal Dr visits. This is 5yrs without getting sick herself or requiring any family leave for other family members (death, sickness etc.) Once the first child is here, there are many more Drs appointments so the female employee must now wait maybe 6yrs before she dare get pregnant again. Now even if you include vacation time as Secretary would insist and use that for pregnancy, this would mean not missing a single day of work for 2yrs and 6 mos. In the meantime, her male co-workers have no such worries. If they simply don't feel like coming into work or have a sniffle, they can call in sick. They have no need to scrimp and save leave for pregnancy. However, all female workers who would like to perpetuate the human species, are doomed to the drudgery of a career with zero sick days and zero vacations because it must be saved for childbearing. The inequity in the system is that it does not account for the fact that women are the ones that have to bear, birth and nurse the babies and gives men and women the exact same amount of leave and then tells women they must eek out maternity leave from this allowance. That is just plain sexist. Now, I don't mind the unpaid maternity leave so much until I start looking at other benefits. I mean paid leave to be a bone marrow donor??? Come on! Paid 1/2 day of leave after donating blood?? likewise. Now, they want to start giving benefits to people who are not even employees!! Well, I think that any extra benefit money should be slated for expanding benefits to employees first and that the current maternity leave policies and the health benefits are areas that are seriously lacking. Pregnant Federal Employee Pregnant Federal Employee Posted July 8, 2003 12:38 PM
• Paid maternity leave sounds good to me. I think they should give grants to employees who adopt too. Although the FFLA allows for 12 weeks "unpaid" leave, who the heck can afford to take unpaid leave? As for the life partner coverage? Does that mean if I have an opposite gender partner and we're not legally married that I can get them coverage too? This is a can of worms. Now if they want to start legalizing the same sex marriages, that's different. GovExec.com reader Posted July 8, 2003 1:16 PM
• As a federal employee, I earn 13 days sick leave a year. There is no cap on how much sick leave I maintain. Annual leave is earned at the rate of 13-26 days per year. Then, there is the unpaid "Family Leave Act." Now, you want paid maternity leave? How about this, use your sick and/or annual leave and call it paid maternity leave. The unfairness of paid maternity leave is obvious. GovExec.com reader Posted July 7, 2003 8:16 AM