News Briefs

THE DAILY FED

News Briefs

The following news summaries are from OPM AM, the daily newsletter of the Office of Personnel Management. OPM AM is available on OPM Mainstreet, the agency's electronic bulletin board, at 202-606-4800.

THE FEDERAL DIARY--"Several hundred thousand postal clerks and letter carriers will be getting a special $400 check next month in addition to their regular paychecks. The Postal Service will have to sell lots of 32-cent stamps to cover the lump-sum payment, but officials figured it is much cheaper than a permanent pay raise of comparable value. Although the timing of the payment (scheduled for Dec. 13) makes it seem like a Christmas bonus, it is actually just a provision of separate but similar contracts between the biggest federal agency, the Postal Service, and the government's two largest unions, the American Postal workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers....Pay raises for most of the 800,000 postal workers are determined by negotiations" (The Washington Post).

ROLLING THE DICE FOR BETTER DIGS--"Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.), singer and lead guitarist for the House rock band "The Amendments," wanted to be in the remote reaches of the Rayburn Building. He's keeping a 12-string acoustic in his current office, but occasionally plugs in, which can get noisy....Peterson, a cowboy-boots conservative Democrat from rural Minnesota, and Klug, a smooth-talking GOP moderate from Madison, showed up yesterday with the rest of the class of 1990 to pick a new office in the House's post-election lottery. The drawing began last week, and will continue for another three days until each of the House's 435 members and five delegates has a chance to pick. The senior-most members chose first, and if they didn't already have a fancy suite overlooking the Capitol, they had a chance to get one of those abandoned by retired, defeated or dead colleagues" (The Washington Post).

CLINTON LOOKS EARLY FOR BALANCED-BUDGET DEAL--"The White House is quietly offering a deal on scoring the budget a year after the federal government was shut down in a battle between the Republican Congress and President Clinton over a balanced budget....The OMB director is scheduled to meet today with Sen. Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico Republican and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat; and Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, to discuss possible areas of agreement" (The Washington Times).

CAREERS ARE AMONG THE CASUALTIES OF C.I.A.'s LATEST SECURITY BREACH--"The careers of the bright new graduates of the Central Intelligence Agency's school for spies are blighted: the F.B.I. fears that the class lists and curriculum are sitting in a Russian safe. The identities of American businessmen in Moscow who volunteer intelligence secrets to the C.I.A. have probably been exposed. The agency's operations in Moscow, Tokyo, Manila and Malaysia have been compromised. And the reputation of the nation's clandestine service has taken another crushing blow. That for starters, is the damage believed to have been done by Harold J. Nicholson, the C.I.A. officer arrested on Saturday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and charged with selling secrets to Moscow, intelligence and law-enforcement officials said today" (The New York Times).

FEBs HAVE BECOME MODELS FOR GOVERNMENT OF THE NEXT CENTURY--"Federal executive boards (FEBs) are Uncle Sam's unsung heroes. They kicked off the campaign that won pay reform in 1990. They are the lifeblood of reinvention. They held federal agencies together during the earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, snowstorms, bombings and shutdowns of recent years. Now these regional powerhouses may well become the models for the stripped down, tight-fisted, devolved and partnership-based government of the 21st century" (Government Executive, November 1996).