Are FSA Employees Federal?

That was my question when I saw this Post item, reporting OPM will survey all federal employees to assess their job satisfaction.  Now for some purposes county FSA employees who aren't farm loan officers are considered federal, for some purposes not.  I'd hope OPM includes them in this survey, but my guess in the normal course of events they won't.

Why Bureaucrats Don't Like Contractors

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries posts about a scandal at Aerospace Corp. Seems they employed on a government contract a Phd from Oxford who really had only a high school diploma, and who didn't work the hours he claimed.  Aerospace didn't have any incentive to police him because they were charging the government more than they were paying the supposed engineer.

Why Federal Employees Don't Feel Overpaid

From a Washington Post article on Great Falls, a wealthy suburb of DC which has evolved in the past 20+ years, much of its growth coming from government contractors and those who sell to the government.  A quote:

Even rank-and-file employees benefit. In a recent survey by the jobs Web site ClearanceJobs.com, contractors with security clearances earned an average salary of $98,221, or 18 percent more than those doing similar jobs in the government

 To expand this point, federal employees don't feel overpaid because they can see contractors and vendors earning better money.  And they can see people retiring, particularly from the military and DOD, and going into private enterprise making use of the knowledge and contacts they gained while in the government.

Now to some extent it's apples and oranges: postal workers and mid-level bureaucrats are unlikely to move to private enterprise.  And the bureaucrat who resents the hell out of a contractor/consultant who comes in as a savior, but with no knowledge of the agency's business, is unlikely to remember the contractor is taking on a lot of risk: today's contract feast is tomorrow's no-work famine.  But we're talking psychology here, we're talking people, not an accountant's audit.

[Updated: with this--"And in case you're keeping score at home, "Great" Falls was at the top of the list of "top-earning towns," which, you know, shocker, especially when you consider it's essentially a magnet for government welfare recipients, also known as "contractors," the end."

The Best Reform: Firing Low Performers

That's the message STeve Kelman got from SESers.

I'd draw a parallel between evaluating and firing teachers and evaluating and firing other bureaucrats.  Teachers can, we assume, be evaluated based on whether their students consistently each year improve. For some bureaucrats we may be able to find similar measures of performance, but for most it's going to be difficult.  For both teachers and bureaucrats you have a supervisor whose judgment is going to be invoked in the evaluation and the firing. Unfortunately, I think it's true it's harder to evaluate supervisors than it is their employees. 

On a personal note, thinking back over my career I'm not at all sure how I'd evaluate myself as a supervisor: some years and with some employees I was pretty good, with some employees and other years I was poor.  Rather reminds me of the director's commentary on "The Hunt for Red October" we watched last night.  The director kept saying he wasn't sure whether what he had tried to do came off well.

So, bottom line: while I can agree with the message Mr. Kelman takes away, it's wise to be cautious: a bad supervisor can do a lot of damage.

Firing Federal Employees

This FCW post covers a USAToday study showing:

By researching the Office of Personnel Management’s database, the newspaper found that the job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43 percent last year and nearly 100 percent for those on the job more than a few years.

 I'm sympathetic to the idea firing employees is too hard.  On the other hand, there's some unknown fraction of the people who leave their jobs voluntarily who really don't. I'd love to see a study which compared job leaving rates among similar jobs in the federal and state governments and private enterprise. I don't know what it would show--maybe federal managers are skilled in making life uncomfortable for employees they want to get rid of.  Or maybe it would show managers are skilled in making employees to turkey farms, where they do no damage, except to the taxpayer.  Or maybe it would show managers are masochists who just suffer with their unsatisfactory employees.

I Am a Federal Employee

Actually, I'm not, used to be, but not now.  Here's a site for people who want to rise in defense of federal employees, or at least get things off their chest.

Public Management Conference With No Public Managers

That seems almost be the case (there were two civil servants there) at this conference reported by Federal Computer Weekly.

Zero

As a counter to the CRS study yesterday which I blogged on, zero is the number of federal employees who make more money than:

• the NCAA Division I football coach in their state
• the average employee salary of Goldman Sachs(2006) 2010
• any full season major league baseball player
• the winner of any PGA tournament

Overpaid Federal Employees?

The Washington Times headline story this moring is 77000 federal employees make more money than the governors of the states in which they live, based on a Congressional Research Service study requested by Sen. Coburn. Doctors and air traffic controllers were the biggest share of the employees.

It's an ingenious study, and terrible PR for the feds, though I'm not sure that it's any real use.

Poor Timothy Geithner

Slate's piece on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's compensation says:

DSK's compensation and expenses are in line with his peers, the small handful of central bankers and finance ministers at the helm of the global economy. The president of the World Bank, for instance, makes almost exactly same amount. As per the bank's most recent annual report, Director Robert Zoellick earns $441,980 in salary, plus $79,120 for living expenses.

What's missed is our Treasury Secretary, arguably the most important of that "small handful". He earns $191,300, a cut of more than 50 percent from his NY Fed job. And I'm pretty sure ordinary government travel regulations apply.  He probably could get business class on long trips, seems to me I remember some other Cabinet members successfully arguing the point, but no $3000 hotel suites.

Changing the Pension System

A factoid from today's Post article on possible changes: "About 80 percent of federal employees are under FERS."  That says to me about 20 percent of federal employees have 25+ years of service, because they're still under CSRS, and therefore wouldn't be affected by current proposals. 

As usual, I like to see graduated changes: if they do change the contribution percentage I'd either phase it in over a few years (particularly years without a pay freeze) and/or phase it in with new employees getting the full hit and the older employees taking the smaller hit. 

Federal Salaries

Apparently doctors and lawyers in the federal service make lots of money.  Federal Computer Week links to a USA Today story on those making over $180,000:

•Doctors held roughly eight out of 10 of the top-salaried jobs. Attorneys accounted for nearly 6%, followed by dentists, with almost 3%, and financial institution examiners, with nearly 2%.

•Nearly two out of three were men. Almost nine out of 10 were 40 or older. And more than half had at least 10 years of federal service.

•California, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New York and Texas had both the highest numbers of the high-salary jobs and the highest number of all federal posts.

 To me, $180K is lots of money but I know to most conservatives, $250K is not.

On the other hand, here's a report IT workers make more in the government.

Changing Federal Pensions

The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery reports that deficit reduction talks are considering changes in federal pensions, specifically requiring an increase in the employee contribution to the system. 

My memory is the Reagan administration pushed through a redo of the civil service pension system in the mid-80's.  Part of the idea was saving money, part was to make federal bureaucrats more able to change careers, part was just responding to the currents in the air (i.e, the general change from defined benefit to defined contribution retirement systems in the private sector).   I'm not aware of any followup studies to see there is more changing around  because the employee can take her TSP (aka gov. 401k) with her. I suspect that aspect was oversold.

 Her last four paragraphs:

Federal employee unions dispute the need for adjustments, arguing that FERS is already significantly less generous than its predecessor, the Civil Service Retirement System. CSRS paid retirees $2,587 per month on average in 2007, versus $944 for FERS, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, one of the largest representing federal workers. And unlike many state employee pension systems, FERS is fully funded.
“We’re sort of surprised, actually, to see the attacks on this as if it were some kind of a gold-plated system,” said Gilman, the union legislative director.
David John, a retirement expert at the Heritage Foundation, agreed that FERS “is far more responsible than most of the state and local pension plans.” But at a time when the federal government is spending drastically more than it takes in, he said, it is reasonable to ask whether taxpayers can afford it.
In the private sector, less than 20 percent of workers still have access to a traditional pension, John said. “With FERS, everyone does.”

I'm one of those CSRS retirees, living high off the hog. :-) In an ideal world, it'd be possible to reduce benefits to me in order to lessen the impact on others.  But in the real world, the only way to reduce benefits to those already receiving them is to change the COLA formula.  Hence Rep. Ryan's proposal to phase in his Medicare changes with those under 55.

Fed Salaries: Government Employee With Summer Cottage

A different perspective on federal salaries: in the 1930's my uncle was a researcher at Beltsville on animal nutrition. Had a nice house in the DC suburbs and a summer cottage near Annapolis while supporting wife and two young kids.  Today I doubt an ARS scientist could manage a cottage on a single salary. Most likely he'd be saving money for college tuition.  Of course, even back then a private feed company hired him away from USDA.

Fire Bureaucrats for Terminal Stupidity

On the one hand, Michelle Singletary of the Post has a column entitled "Don't Be Afraid of the Taxman" (taxperson?)  On the other hand, the Post's Federal Eye discusses a move in the House by Republicans to fire any federal employee who owes back taxes.  Put the two together and I reach a position which may be surprising: fire federal employees (and DC councilmen, are you listening Marion Barry) who owe back taxes without getting a repayment agreement within 6 months.

A failure to get an agreement is prima facie evidence of terminal stupidity.

I'd hasten to add, I don't think the House Reps are going about it the right way, no hearings, no full consideration. But federal employees are civil servants and should meet a higher standard than ordinary mortals.

Those Overpaid Bureaucrats at CIA

Seem to be taking their knowledges, skills and abilities to find ( lower-paid ?) jobs in the private sector according to the Washington Post.

Ezra Klein and Public Employees

Klein argues that public employees haven't had their pay rise much in the past two decades.  That may be true, but public employees saw a big jump in the value of their jobs in the past 3 years. When I started working for the Federal government I knew the rewards for my efforts were reasonable salary, good health insurance, good retirement benefits, and job security, discounting any psychic returns of serving the public (JFK's "ask not...").  I was giving up the possibility of great pay and fast advancement.

My point is there was a trade-off.  You watch these whipper-snappers like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Ken Lay and now Mr. Zuckerberg come along and make their billions, the whiz-kids and quants on Wall Street making their big bonuses, and you know you traded the chance to make that money in favor of security, etc.  The Great Recession means those go-go careers are a whole lot riskier than they appeared to be in the past, thus my security is more valuable.

Those Overpaid Federal Bureaucrats, and a Certain House

There's a house on sale for $800,000.  I got to thinking about whether the price was too high (the answer: not if the seller can find a buyer at that price. :-), a thought triggered by the note on zillow.com of the down payment and mortgage payment required.

Let me wing a few figures, based on the conventional wisdom back when I first bought a house (1976): a 20 percent down payment means a buyer needs $160,000 in cash.  I guess that's probably not a problem, at least usually, because any buyer is going to be selling their current home. Although these days there's many fewer owners who have that much equity in their homes; many owners are under water.

The principal and interest with a 30-year mortgage is roughly $3,500, or $42,000 a year. Property taxes, at $12 per 1,000 assessed valuation, might be $9,000 or so.  Add insurance of maybe a couple thousand, so you're talking PITI of around $53,000.  Call it $50,000, because I like round figures, and figure what it's 30 percent of and you come out to about $170,000 a year.

Yes, when I bought my first house, the conventional wisdom was PITI shouldn't be more than 30 percent of gross income, at least that's what I remember.  So, what's the bottom line?

Almost no federal employee could afford that $800,000 house within the constraints of 1976 wisdom.  I don't know how many houses in the U.S. would go for more than $800,000, but lots.  It's just another confirmation that high ranking federal employees are not overpaid, whatever may be true of lower ranking employees.

Inadvertent Effects of Change: Old Sick Feds and a Haircut

Sen. Collins has gotten some press over the issue of Federal employees who are getting workers comp payments under the Federal Employees Benefit Act, even though they're old, I mean really old, I mean older thn me even (a few). I haven't seen any discussion but I'd guess this is a side effect of the change many years ago eliminating mandatory retirement (used to be 70 if I recall). The issue is whether the employee is able to go back to work. It's obvious to us that no Federal employee is going to return to the office when he's 90, so he ought to be involuntarily retired and given his pension.  Of course, when I say it's obvious, it's not really obvious, because there are odd ball employees so dedicated they continue to work long after anyone else would retire.

Which brings me to my haircut.  Got one today.  A phone call came in from the shop owner saying he'd be back by 3:30.  My barber explained that the owner's mother, living in WV, had health issues.  She was 93, worked all her life in the local school cafeteria until they retired her at the age of 85, then went back on a volunteer basis.  While she's not a federal employee, she illustrates my point.  As does Bruno Mangum, the FSA employee who died in 2007 at the age of 90.

Having written all this, it makes sense to kick employees off the workers comp rolls when they're eligible for full retirement benefits.  And remembering an article in the NYTimes a while back on abuses of the workman's comp rules (Long Island RR maybe? I forget), it makes sense to audit the enforcement of the rules because they're easily abused.

Bureaucrats Day: Civil Service

The Pendleton Act was signed Jan. 16, 1883. The purpose was to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States, partly by establishing the Civil Service Commission. The first use of the term "civil service" was in 1770 according to Merriam-Webster. "Military service" was first used around 1630.