DHS personnel ruling will affect Pentagon, senator says

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said a court ruling last month that struck down some of the Homeland Security Department's personnel regulations could require the department to "go back to the drawing board" and might force the Pentagon to "take a harder look" at its personnel proposal scheduled to be put in place later this year.

U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, in throwing out the rules, said they do not provide for collective bargaining. Collins said this week she was concerned that DHS drew up regulations that did not "reflect congressional intent."

A spokesman for House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., whose panel also oversees federal workers, would only say of the ruling's ramifications: "It's too early in the process to predict the outcome of the litigation or how it will affect other systems."

DHS announced last week that it would delay implementation of the new personnel system, scheduled to go into effect in January, for at least a year. It is not clear whether that decision was related to the court ruling, or what changes -- if any -- would be made before implementation. Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel for the American Federation of Governmental Employees, the largest of four unions that filed the suit, said DHS may ask to simply revisit the labor relations portion of the regulations, rather than rewrite the whole system. A spokesman for the Justice Department, which is handling the court case, did not return calls.

The Pentagon plans to continue tweaking its personnel rules before releasing them this fall, according to a spokeswoman for the National Security Personnel System, which is responsible for drafting the regulations. She said NSPS has "gone through an extensive meet-and-confer process with our unions" and received thousands of public comments on its draft regulations. She said the office would be making changes but attributed those revisions to the feedback it received, not the court ruling. Still, Morrow said AFGE was likely to challenge the Pentagon's regulations after they are released because, in the union's view, NSPS did not follow Congress' guidelines for the comment process.

When introduced earlier this year, the revamped Homeland Security and Pentagon personnel regulations were heralded as models for a new, governmentwide human resources system. Although OMB circulated draft legislation this spring overhauling the federal personnel system, Collins and Davis have yet to act on it. House Government Reform ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who applauded the court ruling, said in a statement that it "should send a signal to both the administration and Congress to slow down on any government-wide personnel changes."