Federal employees who work in Rhode Island and Monterey County, Calif. have something to look forward to next year if a new proposed rule from the Office of Personnel Management is finalized.
Locality pay gives federal employees in 31 metropolitan areas additional pay adjustments based on Bureau of Labor Statistics salary surveys in those areas. The bureau also calculates an additional adjustment for the rest of the country. The Federal Salary Council, a body of union representatives and pay and benefits analysts, recommends locality pay increases to the administration. The administration then decides whether to follow the salary council's recommendations.
OPM has proposed changing two criteria that determine whether or not an adjacent area can be tacked on to a nearby locality. The first change applies to entire states that want to be considered an area of application. It would allow states that are smaller than 115 percent of the average county size in the United States to be treated as a single county for applying the area of application criteria. That way, the surrounding area locality pay can be applied. The first proposal would allow the Boston locality pay rate (Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, MA-NH-ME-CT) to apply to workers in the state of Rhode Island.
Federal agencies in Rhode Island have reported difficulty filling positions because nearby areas, including Boston and Hartford, have higher locality pay rates.
The second change applies to counties that want to be counted as an adjacent application area. It reduces the "percent of the population living in urbanized areas" criterion from 90 percent to 80 percent. As a result, Monterey County, Calif. would count as an area of application to the San Francisco pay area.
Monterey County has many federal parklands and military installations, making it harder for the county to pass the population density criterion. Since the county gets a large amount of commuters going to and from San Francisco, the federal salary council recommended allowing Monterey County to apply to the San Francisco locality pay area.
Last year the San Francisco area received a 15.01 percent locality payment while the Boston area's was 10.72 percent.
Comments on the proposed changes are due to Allan Hearne at OPM by October 16. The contact information is: (202) 606-2838 and payleave@opm.gov.
NEXT STORY: GSA to sponsor forums on IT access for disabled