Buyout Authority Ends

DAILY BRIEFING

Buyout Authority Ends

Most federal agencies this week will lose the authority to offer buyouts worth up to $25,000 to employees who agree to retire or resign.

The governmentwide buyout authority granted to the Clinton administration by Congress runs out Dec. 30. At least 148,000 federal employees have accepted buyouts and left government service since 1992, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Buyouts helped the Clinton administration reduce the federal workforce by more than 280,000 employees between January 1993 and July 1997, according to Office of Personnel Management data.

The Defense and Agriculture Departments, NASA and several smaller agencies can continue to offer buyouts under separate congressional authorizations.

The buyout round ending this week began in October 1996, after Congress tightened the rules governing how agencies could use the authority. Agencies were criticized after the first governmentwide buyout round, which ran in 1994 and 1995, for granting buyouts haphazardly and for hiring contractors to perform work that had been done by employees who took buyouts.

Buyouts helped defray the use of reductions-in-force, or RIFs, which are considered more disruptive. From October 1992 to July 1997, 33,895 federal employees were let go as a result of RIFs, OPM says.

Buyouts are also credited with increasing the percentage of women and minorities in the federal workforce, because buyout takers were more likely to be older white men.