OPM rules allow agencies to raise some SES salaries
Only those with certified performance systems can boost pay rates to new base cap.
The Office of Personnel Management on Monday issued final regulations that enable some agencies to raise basic pay rates for senior executives as high as $158,100.
But only agencies that have OPM and Office of Management and Budget certified performance systems can raise pay rates to the new base cap, or access the new aggregate pay cap of $203,000, when bonuses are included.
Congress passed legislation in November 2003 that raised the pay caps, but also eliminated regular cost-of-living adjustments for the government's 6,200 top civil service executives, as well as locality pay. About 70 percent of those executives now receive basic pay rates at or near the old base pay cap of $145,600. The new pay cap was designed to relieve pay compression in the upper echelons of the Senior Executive Service, and to ensure that future salary increase decisions are based solely on performance.
Last July, OPM issued regulations that established rigorous criteria for the performance appraisal systems. Full certification requires that appraisal systems meet nine criteria in the areas of "strategic alignment, consultation, results, balance, assessment and guidance, oversight, accountability, performance differentiation, and pay differentiation," according to an OPM statement. Provisional certification, which must be renewed after two years, is given to agencies whose performance appraisal systems have met five of the nine criteria: "strategic alignment, consultation, results, balance and accountability." Full certification cannot be granted to any agency unless it can demonstrate two years of results under the pay differentiation and performance differentiation criteria.
In addition to raising senior executive pay rates, the rules also allow agencies to cut an executive's pay by up to 10 percent a year, 5 percent more than was allowed under the previous rules. And the new rules set lower rates of pay for incoming senior executives. The minimum salary allowed under the new rules is about $105,000, $11,500 less than the previous minimum and less than what many GS-15 employees now earn.
But the rules also will allow agencies to provide more than one pay raise to an executive in a given year to reward particularly meritorious service, to retain a top leader, to recruit a well-qualified executive, or to promote one to a position of greater responsibility.