Poor performers will not fare well under GAO personnel reform plan

There's only one thing employees have a problem with in the General Accounting Office's personnel flexibilities bill introduced in the House Wednesday by Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., according to Comptroller General David Walker: elimination of the annual governmentwide pay increase.

"There is nothing in the bill that would allow me to, nor do I contemplate, cutting a GAO employee's pay," Walker told members of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization. "Employees who perform at the 'meets expectations' level or better will receive cost-of-living adjustment and locality pay at a minimum, and then they should receive some performance-based pay. But there is one group that clearly will not be better off under this bill…our employees who are performing at less than satisfactory standards. They would not get an across-the-board increase or merit pay," Walker explained.

Under the "GAO Human Capital Reform Act of 2003" (H.R. 2751) GAO would get permanent authority to offer early retirement and buyout incentives to employees. The agency currently has temporary congressional authority to offer those incentives. The watchdog agency would also be allowed to set its own annual pay raise levels, giving managers the freedom to tie raises more closely to performance appraisal ratings. The bill would also create an exchange employee program with the private sector, increase leave for senior-level employees with less than three years of experience, expand the agency's ability to pay employee relocation expenses and change its name to the Government Accountability Office.

"Our system isn't perfect, no system is perfect and none will be; but it's the best in government," Walker said, praising the proposal.

GAO is an independent legislative branch agency that examines management in executive branch agencies. Its employees are not represented by unions and can't negotiate changes in benefits or working conditions. But the Comptroller General said he and agency officials used various outreach methods to gauge employees' response to the proposal, including televised chats, listening sessions, verbal and written feedback and a poll of Senior Executive Service members.

"We listened to our employees and made clarifications, modifications and commitments based on the responses," Walker said.

Chris Keisling, a member of GAO's 23-member Employees Advisory Council, said that most employees generally support the measure, but agreed with Walker that the provisions affecting pay drew the most concern from the GAO workforce. The four-year-old advisory council represents all grade levels and demographics of the agency's workforce.

"There are concerns that a GAO-based adjustment will be lower than those enacted by Congress," Keisling said.

But Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., questioned the effort put into getting a snapshot of how employees at all levels of the agency felt about the measure as opposed to only senior-level employees and managers.

"I do object to your representing where GAO people stand when the only way to know how to gauge where people stand is to have them vote up or down," Norton said after Walker admitted that there was no agencywide poll on the proposal.

Other committee members and witnesses found little to challenge in the plan, instead commenting on the fractious way in which civil service reform is happening across the federal government and the lack of stakeholder consultation performed by Defense Department officials in developing their civilian personnel transformation proposal.

"This is tough stuff," testified Paul Light, vice president for governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. "You gotta sit down with your employees sometimes and talk about what's going on."