Limits on performance award funds being considered to help trim budget

Awards can provide a nice chunk of change for workers whose base salaries are stuck in time. Nearly 80 percent of career Senior Executive Service members received awards in fiscal year 2009, and they averaged about $14,800. Currently, awards to SES members range from 5 percent to 20 percent of an individual’s salary, with an agency allowed to spend no more than 10 percent of the prior year’s payroll on awards.

William L. Bransford, general counsel of the Senior Executive Association, said limiting the awards could discourage high-level General Schedule employees from seeking SES positions because, in some cases, they may already make as much or more than the executives.

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“You’re going to need some recruiting tools,” Bransford said.

In the 2006 fiscal year, 1.3 million awards were given out across all levels, according to OPM data. The average award was $969, which in aggregate amounted to just a smidgen more than 1 percent of total salaries.

Some agencies could have a conflict between the award limits outlined in the memo and award amounts negotiated with labor unions. The memo reminds agency heads “to honor all collective bargaining obligations and discuss agency award programs in agency labor-management forums.”

In some cases, the collective bargaining agreements set awards at levels greater than the 1 percent for non-SES employees proposed in the draft guidance. For example, NTEU contracts call for Bureau of Public Debt awards to be 2.5 percent of aggregate salaries; Internal Revenue Service awards are pegged at 1.75 percent. The draft policy would not change things at Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services, where the negotiated award levels are 1 percent.

“We expect these contract provisions to be honored,” Kelley said.

Guilty plea in HUD case

Reginald B. Hayes, the former director of employee and career development at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, faces up to a year in prison after pleading guilty last week to a misdemeanor conflict of interest offense.

Hayes, 61, of Dumfries, “admitted that he received money from a company that obtained contracts from HUD in return for his assistance — sometimes in his official capacity at HUD — in obtaining those contracts,” according to a news release from the office of Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. attorney for the District.

William J. Thorpe, a former physical security specialist at the Department of Homeland Security, also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor conflict of interest last week. The 39-year-old Fredericksburg, Va., resident could get up to a year in prison when he is sentenced in September.

Thorpe used sensitive information he obtained as a DHS employee to help a private company, Total Security Products Corporation, submit the lowest bid for a DHS contract, prosecutors said. The bid was just $1.21 lower than the agency’s target price of $98,129.13.

When the scam was discovered, the second-lowest bidder was awarded the contract.

Staff writer Eric Yoder contributed to this column.