Law enforcement agencies make pitch for better pay, no-hassle hiring

The government needs to improve pay and streamline the hiring process for law enforcement officers to attract and retain a talented workforce, top officials from three agencies said during a House hearing Wednesday. A bureaucratic hiring process and caps on overtime pay are hampering efforts to recruit and retain law enforcement officers and other employees, according to officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs Service and U.S. Marshals Service. The additional anti-terrorism responsibilities the three agencies have acquired since Sept. 11 are resulting in thin staffing and resources, officials from the agencies said. Participants in the hearing discussed whether to hire new employees through the excepted service, which houses jobs excluded from competitive civil service procedures, and whether to offer bonuses to employees in non-law enforcement positions at the agencies for having foreign language skills. "There would be a better selection and a greater ability to hire and promote people who are performing well," said INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar, referring to the use of the excepted service during a House Government Reform subcommittee hearing on recruitment and retention challenges within the federal law enforcement community. Robert M. Smith, assistant commissioner in Customs' human resources office, hoped the Bush administration's "Freedom to Manage Act" would loosen some of the restraints on federal pay. The initiative proposes expanding pilot programs dealing with pay-banding, performance bonuses and other variations to the traditional General Schedule grade and step system. It would also give federal managers more flexibility in recruiting and retaining employees. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have exacerbated the recruitment and retention challenges faced by such law enforcement agencies as the INS, Customs and the U.S. Marshals Service, said Ziglar, Smith and Gary E. Mead, assistant director of business services at the Marshals Service. According to Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, several lawmakers support increasing the number of law enforcement officers stationed at the nation's northern border, but he said the pay system will have to be revamped to attract and retain employees. "Expansion of these agencies may require significant improvements to the pay scale of federal officers," he said. Unions that represent Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers have complained about unfair pay systems for years, but the issue has become more high-profile since Sept. 11. Customs inspectors are working 16 hours a day or more, according to Smith. At the peak of the terrorism crisis, more than 500 deputy marshals of the 2,500 marshals nationwide were working on terrorism-related tasks in addition to their regular duties, Mead said. And the INS has lent 1,000 of its 1,977 special agents to the terrorism investigation "While employees are working large amounts of overtime, many are not being paid for the hours and all are quickly reaching the annual limit on overtime that INS may legally pay these employees," said Ziglar. Immigration inspectors at the INS and Customs inspectors cannot take home more than $30,000 in overtime in one year. Provisions of both the House and Senate versions of anti-terrorism legislation address the overtime cap. U.S. Marshals cannot make more than $4,508 in premium pay in a two-week period. Premium pay includes overtime, Sunday pay, holiday pay, night differentials, hazardous duty pay and standby duty pay. The average Border Patrol agent makes about $59,000 each year, which includes base pay, overtime and other compensation. Ziglar said he is concerned about employees who may leave the Border Patrol to join the air marshals program. "If I don't have something on the table to help them feed their families with, many will go somewhere else," he said. Ziglar said the INS has fared better on recruitment incentives: the agency was able to offer recruitment bonuses of $2,000 to all new Border Patrol agents in 2000 and is currently giving new immigration inspectors in the agency's San Francisco office $5,000 bonuses. Ziglar, Smith and Mead pledged that their agencies would not lower their standards for new employees as a result of more streamlined hiring practices. "We are attracting people, but the current process is so burdened with bureaucratic rules," said Ziglar.