Reality check

Last month, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a rule that would make it easier for agencies to offer retention bonuses. A new rule allowing agencies to help employees with the cost of student loans is also in the works. Congress is urging agencies to provide child-care subsidies to low-income federal workers. Some members of Congress are pushing for pay-banding systems, which give managers more flexibility in boosting high-performing employees' salaries. But Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, has a question about all these great new benefits: "Where does the funding come from?" "It's very hard to implement if there's no funding," Kelley said this week. Most new federal employee benefits provisions-often tucked into the annual Treasury-Postal appropriations bill-instruct agencies to pay for them out of their salaries and expenses accounts. But Congress doesn't always adjust salaries and expenses accounts to include funds for new benefits. The authorizing legislation doesn't usually provide for offsets elsewhere in the federal budget. In recent years, agencies have been squeezing more and more benefits out of salary and expenses budgets. These benefits include recruitment, relocation and retention bonuses; transit subsidies; child-care subsidies; professional liability insurance reimbursement; higher senior executive rank bonuses; and higher agency retirement contribution rates. "Unfunded mandates," as Kelley called some benefits improvements, can make new perks for federal workers look a whole lot more exciting on paper than they are in reality. Retirement Contribution Rollback

If you're wondering whatever happened to the proposal to roll back federal employees' retirement contributions, look at your pay stub. Under the fiscal 2001 Transportation appropriations bill, most Civil Service Retirement System enrollees should see 7 percent of their basic pay withheld as retirement contributions. Most Federal Employee Retirement System enrollees should see 0.8 percent of their basic pay withheld, according to a November OPM letter to federal payroll offices. Those rates are effective in the first pay period of 2001, which for most employees began on Jan. 14. As part of the 1997 balanced budget agreement, Congress and President Clinton had temporarily raised employees' retirement contribution rates. The rates were to increase gradually until 2003, when they would return to 1997 levels. With the brighter budget picture for fiscal 2001, Congress decided to drop the rates a couple years early. Legislative Update

A dozen bills affecting federal pay and benefits have been introduced on the Hill this month. You can keep up with these bills using GovExec.com's Bill Tracker. Here's a quick look at the new legislation:

• H.R. 579 would allow federal employees to obtain health benefits coverage under FEHBP for their dependent parents.
• H.R. 568 would provide for coverage of fertility and impotence treatments under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
• S. 263 would ensure that FEHBP plans provide coverage of bone mass measurements.
• H.R. 570 would increase pay for federal judges by 9.6 percent next year. It would also provide for annual cost-of-living increases for the judiciary.
• H.R. 572 would move the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund off-budget
• H.R. 555 would improve child-care services for federal employees.
• S. 271 would change the mandatory retirement age for federal firefighters. A companion bill, H.R. 93, was introduced in the House last month.
• H.R. 438 would eliminate automatic pay adjustments for members of Congress. The automatic increases have helped ensure that federal senior executives get raises each year, since Senior Executive Service pay is tied to congressional pay. A separate bill introduced last month, H.R. 241, has the same purpose.
• H.R. 446 would revamp disability annuities for law enforcement officers, firefighters, and members of the Capitol Police.
• H.R. 497 would allow agencies to use up to 50 percent of unspent administrative funds at the end of a fiscal year to pay bonuses to agency personnel.
• H.R. 512 would end the prohibition against overtime pay for National Guard technicians.
• H.R. 513 would provide more equitable civil service retirement and retention provisions for National Guard technicians.