Cop wars

The creation of the Transportation Security Administration may have an unintended consequence: Salaries for federal law enforcement officers throughout the government may go up. Officials at federal law enforcement agencies have long worried about their ability to recruit and retain officers at the pay the government offers, particularly in expensive cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now law enforcement officials are really, really worried. They're losing employees in record numbers to the Federal Aviation Administration and the TSA, which started recruiting heavily for air marshals and other security personnel after Sept. 11 by raising the bar on salaries and benefits. Three aspects of air marshal compensation are particularly effective at drawing federal officers away from their agencies. First, salaries range from $35,100 to $80,800 across three broad pay bands ($35,100 to $54,300; $42,800 to $66,200; and $52,200 to $80,800). Most experienced federal law enforcement officers make substantially more money as air marshals. Second, air marshals receive law enforcement availability pay, which is equal to 25 percent of their salary. Air marshals get that pay in place of overtime pay. Many federal officers prefer availability pay because it counts toward retirement-and therefore increases their pensions. Overtime pay doesn't count toward retirement. Third, air marshals are covered by special law enforcement retirement rules, which allow them to retire at age 55 after 20 years of service or at any age after 25 years of service and still receive their full pensions. Many federal law enforcement officers, most notably police officers such as Veterans Affairs police and Federal Protective Service police, are covered under normal retirement rules that force them to work longer before receiving their full pensions. Those three factors have helped the air marshal program recruit hundreds of law enforcement officers from other federal agencies, including the Border Patrol, Secret Service, Park Police, Federal Protective Service, Veterans Affairs Police, Capitol Police and the Bureau of Prisons. Those agencies are now hurting for employees, and their leaders are trying all the tricks at their disposal to get pay and benefits boosts for experienced officers and new recruits alike. Experienced inspectors and canine enforcement officers at the Customs Service are being reclassified from the GS-9 pay level to the GS-11 pay level-a move that will put thousands more dollars in their pockets each year.

Joseph Moravec, who oversees the Federal Protective Service at the General Services Administration, said Federal Protective Service officers would see increases in their pay packages this summer. Officials at other agencies are trying to convince their bosses, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management to reclassify their officers so that they qualify for more pay and better benefits. Other officials are looking at possible legislative fixes to their staffing woes. Previous legislative fixes, mostly targeted at small groups of law enforcement officers, have left the federal government with a hodgepodge of pay and benefits policies. Border Patrol agents, for example, are covered by the special law enforcement retirement rules. Customs inspectors are not. Park Police and Secret Service uniformed division officers don't receive locality-based raises each year, while most other law enforcement officers do. In New York and Boston, law enforcement officers receive special pay rates that put their salaries above the salaries of other federal employees in those areas. Elsewhere, law enforcement officers are on the same locality-based pay scales as other federal workers. On top of those differences, the Merit Systems Protection Board has bestowed law enforcement status-and better pay and benefits-on individuals throughout the government who have demanded it. The board's rulings apply only to the individuals, so people can work side-by-side doing the same jobs and receive very different compensation packages. "The term 'hornet's nest' comes to mind," an Office of Personnel Management official said this week. OPM officials were willing to talk about the existing law enforcement pay and benefits rules, but they're keeping mum on any ideas for ironing out the differences. They are no doubt getting plenty of feedback from officials throughout government who see some of their best officers fleeing to the air marshals program, leaving them with numerous vacancies to fill at a time when there's never been more demand for experienced law enforcement professionals. Some officials hoped that OPM would let them start offering retention allowances worth up to 25 percent of annual pay to their law enforcement officers, to prevent the officers from going to other federal agencies. But the Bush administration killed the proposed regulation that would have authorized those retention allowances amid concerns that they would encourage interagency competition for employees. Officials who favor the retention allowances point out that interagency competition is already rampant. They also point out that the rules of supply and demand, thanks in large part to the air marshals program, are dictating higher salaries for law enforcement officers. "Law enforcement credentials are in high demand," Moravec said. "The price for people with those kinds of skills is going up."