Exec Pay Freeze Fought

For the past four years, members of Congress have done the politically correct thing: denied themselves a pay raise. In the process, they've also capped the pay of those in the top ranks of the career civil service.

The salaries of Senior Executive Service members, senior federal scientific professionals and federal judges are all tied to the congressional pay scale. Though an automatic annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for members of Congress is mandated by law, every year since 1993 Congress has blocked the COLA from taking effect.

Earlier this month the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees floated the idea of allowing themselves and the senior executives and judges to whom they are lashed a 2.8 percent pay increase.

A coalition of interest group leaders, including consumer activist Ralph Nader and Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Coalitions for America, blasted the idea. Several members of Congress vowed to oppose any pay raise.

Faced with the likelihood of another year of frozen pay for senior executives, the Senior Executives Association floated the idea of de-linking SES pay from congressional pay.

"It got little to no interest," says SEA general counsel G. Jerry Shaw. De-linking Congress' pay from that of career executives would make it even more difficult for members to vote themselves a raise. Under the current system, Congress can say it needs to better compensate hard working career civil servants and therefore must raise executive-level pay, including its own.

If Congress again this year blocks a COLA, SEA will ask lawmakers to push up the SES base pay cap from $115,700 (Executive Level IV) to $123,100 (Executive Level III). In addition, SEA's proposal would raise the SES total compensation cap, which includes locality pay, from $123,100 (Executive Level III) to $133,600 (Executive Level II). Shaw says several Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have agreed to introduce a bill that would raise the pay cap for one year.

"It's much more likely to pass if it's only for one year," Shaw says. "It's not as threatening."

Shaw says SEA has asked the Clinton administration to support the measure. "At the right time they will do the right thing," Shaw predicts.

SEA President Carol Bonosaro says the pay freeze is creating "compression" in the upper ranks of the civil service. The top SESers, those at grade ES-6, have been stuck at the $115,700 base pay cap since 1993. This year, the base pay of SESers at grade ES-5 reached $115,700.

In the cities of Houston and San Francisco, the "compression" reaches down another layer to SESers at grade ES-4 when locality pay is factored in.

"The freeze has unfairly penalized executive branch appointees and may well have inhibited recruitment in some cases of the talent and experience needed for these positions," Bonosaro says.