Any game has official rules. But there are unspoken ones, too-the tricks and the strategies one learns to actually win the game.
Take the federal government's locality pay game. Each year, dozens of officials from across the country try to win higher pay rates for the federal workers in their cities, counties or regions. Most follow the official rules. But most lose the game, in part because they don't know the secrets of the locality pay system.
Here are the official rules. The Federal Salary Council, an Office of Personnel Management-run group that includes federal officials and representatives of federal unions, decides whether to approve or deny higher locality pay rates for the jurisdictions that apply. OPM staff collect the applications, then a Federal Salary Council working group recommends which ones to approve, and then the council approves them.
Areas that apply for higher locality rates generally must meet four criteria.
- Be in the "Rest of U.S." pay area and be contiguous to a pay locality.
- Contain at least 2,000 General Schedule (GS) employees.
- Have a significant level of urbanization based on 1990 Census data, defined as a population density of more than 200 persons per square mile or at least 80 percent of the population in urbanized areas.
- Demonstrate some economic linkage with the pay locality, defined as commuting at a level of 5 percent or more into or from the area being considered and the central core of the metropolitan area as identified by the Census Bureau.
Wallace said quit and hiring rates at agencies was important. Are federal workers in the location leaving for the private sector because of low pay? Are they going to work for federal agencies in places where locality pay is higher?
He also asked officials who apply to calculate how much it would cost to raise the locality rate, and how much of a difference a higher rate would make in employees' pay checks.
Then there are the unspoken rules. One is that officials must show up at Federal Salary Council meetings to make their case in person. The only areas that received serious consideration for higher locality pay this year-Barnstable County, Mass., Monroe County, Fla., Larimer County, Colo., and Western Massachusetts-were ones that sent officials to Washington for either or both of the council's Aug. 15 and Oct. 1 meetings.
A second rule is that applications should include a map. Barnstable County, also known as Cape Cod, submitted a map with its application that showed how Cape Cod was completely surrounded by counties with higher locality pay rates. The Cape Cod officials and their supporters at the Greater Boston Federal Executive Board copied the idea from the successful application of Rhode Island officials, who won higher locality pay in 1998.
Another secret is to get members of Congress to submit letters of support to the Federal Salary Council.
Still another secret is to get written support from the top executives of all the federal agencies in the area.
A final secret is to study the successful applications of previous winners of the locality pay game. Most areas that apply for higher pay rates fall short of the 2,000 General Schedule employee requirement. So successful applicants point out unique characteristics about their counties, such as location, size and high rates of park land, that explain why that criterion isn't met. Cape Cod officials, for example, pointed out that the county is only 396 square miles, compared to the average U.S. county size of 1,144 square miles. Then they pointed out that the average county would need 1.75 federal employees per square mile to meet the 2,000-employee requirement. Cape Cod has 1.95 federal employees per square mile, "much higher than the criterion required of larger counties in the United States," the application pointed out.
Even learning the secrets may not help an area win the locality pay game. Cape Cod officials labored for four years before winning the Federal Salary Council's approval. Officials in Western Massachusetts still haven't won, and they've been appearing before the council for several years. Officials from there and from Monroe County complained to the council at the end of its Oct. 1 meeting that unwritten rules and secret techniques make the process of winning locality pay seem arbitrary.
Wallace promised to pull back the curtain in the future. "We will try to provide better descriptions of our decision-making," he said.
For a look at a successful application, see the Barnstable County, Mass., proposal (in PDF format).