No USDA Furloughs
Is It Too Hard to Fire Misbehaving Feds?
Americans Still Like the Postal Service
A Forced 4-Day Weekend for Many Feds
No More Tax-Cheating Feds, Senators Say
Video: The Daily Show on Apple's Taxes
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Kellie Lunney
Senior Correspondent
Kellie Lunney covers federal pay and benefits issues, the budget process and financial management. After starting her career in journalism at Government Executive in 2000, she returned in 2008 after four years at sister publication National Journal writing profiles of influential Washingtonians. In 2006, she received a fellowship at the Ohio State University through the Kiplinger Public Affairs in Journalism program, where she worked on a project that looked at rebuilding affordable housing in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She has appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, NPR and Feature Story News, where she participated in a weekly radio roundtable on the 2008 presidential campaign. In the late 1990s, she worked at the Housing and Urban Development Department as a career employee. She is a graduate of Colgate University.
Memorial Remembers Feds Killed on the Job
April 12, 2013 A simple but elegant wall in an otherwise nondescript federal building in Washington now serves as a memorial to government employees killed in the line of duty. Fifty-two silver stars, one for each state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories, are flanked by two American flags under the ...
Senior Execs’ Finances Won’t Go Online
April 12, 2013 Senior federal employees will not have to disclose their personal finances for an online public database under legislation Congress approved on Friday. Both chambers agreed to end a requirement in the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act for senior career executives and congressional staff to disclose their finances for ...
OPM Director Berry Bids Farewell to Employees
April 11, 2013 Elaine Kaplan, currently general counsel at the Office of Personnel Management, will take over as acting director of the agency next week. OPM Director John Berry formally announced his departure from the agency in an April 11 email to employees. Kaplan, who has been at the agency since March 2009, ...
A Mixed Budget Bag for Feds
April 11, 2013 Budget Day 2013 has finally arrived. Federal employees should not be surprised by the pay and benefits proposals in President Obama’s latest plan, as this is a well-traveled road with all the familiar twists and turns. Obama wants government workers to contribute more to their pensions starting in 2014, a ...
White House Budget Plan Increases Feds’ Pension Contributions
April 10, 2013 President Obama wants federal employees to contribute 1.2 percent more of their pay, phased in over the next three years, toward their pensions. That change would result in most federal workers contributing 2 percent to their defined benefit plan under the administration’s $3.8 trillion fiscal 2014 budget proposal. The recommendation ...
Obama Seeks 1 Percent Pay Raise for Feds
April 10, 2013 Federal employees and military service members would receive a 1 percent pay raise next year under President Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget. The president, as expected, recommended modest, across-the-board salary increases for federal civilians in 2014. If Congress agrees, a raise would lift the current civilian pay freeze, now in its ...
Senior Execs Group 'Baffled' By Bonus Policy
April 9, 2013 The group representing senior civil servants is taking issue with the Obama administration’s approach toward bonuses for top employees during sequestration. The Office of Management and Budget has directed federal agencies to withhold discretionary monetary awards during the sequester “unless agency counsel determines the awards are legally required,” stated an ...
Retirement Claims Continue to Surge
April 8, 2013 The number of new retirement applications continues to exceed the government’s estimates, according to the latest data from the Office of Personnel Management. OPM received 10,183 new claims in March, more than double the 5,000 applications the agency expected to come in last month. Still, OPM managed to reduce the ...
Watchdog: Millions in Katrina Aid Unaccounted For
April 5, 2013 Nearly $700 million in federal aid for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is unaccounted for, according to a new report from a government watchdog. More than 24,000 homeowners in Louisiana who received millions in disaster recovery grants after the 2005 storms either did not comply with the terms of ...
Petition Seeks Student Loan Help for Feds
April 4, 2013 A new public petition is asking the Obama administration to help federal employees by forgiving some student loan debt to offset the pay freeze, now in its third year. The online petition, posted on the administration’s We the People website, recommends reducing by 2.2 percent the principal balance of student ...
