In some corners of the Pentagon, political appointees are receiving slightly higher pay raises this year than their career counterparts in the executive ranks.
Raises are supposed to be tied to how executives performed on the job over the past year. But one internal Pentagon memo, announcing pay raises for the office of the secretary of defense and certain Defense Department agencies, said other factors are being taken into consideration in setting raises for political appointees.
In certain Defense agencies, political appointees and other non-career members of the Senior Executive Service will get 2.5 percent raises if they have been deemed "fully successful," according to the memo.
That same job rating, however, garners only a 2 percent raise for career executives, according to the memo.
The memo justified the higher raise for political appointees on the grounds that they occupy some of the most senior positions in the department, are ineligible for bonuses and did not get last year's pay raise in a timely manner.
Exceptions to the 2 percent raise also are made for career executives who received performance awards in the past year.
According to the memo, a 2.5 percent raise will go to career executives who have won a presidential rank award -- a bonus that typically goes to about 20 department executives a year -- or were in the top 10 percent of Defense bonus recipients last year.
Career executives who received lesser bonuses will receive a 2.38 percent raise, according to the memo.
Until last year, the government's 6,000 SES members received the same pay raise each year, but the Bush administration urged Congress to change the law, contending that pay raises should be based on distinctions in executive performance.
Under the new law, federal executives are no longer guaranteed a raise and do not receive locality pay. Raises are supposed to be determined according to a rigorous job performance rating system, according to the law.
Carol A. Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, a group that lobbies to protect the interests of the career ranks, called the reasons laid out in the Pentagon memo "not smart at best and unreasonable at worst."
She said it is well known that political appointees seek to serve in government so that they can hold senior positions and that they enter these jobs knowing that they are ineligible for certain types of awards, such as bonuses.
The memo, she said, "sends a wrong signal and gets the system off on the wrong foot. It is just not smart -- not over five-tenths of a percent is it worth sending this signal that there is different criteria for career versus non-career."
The memo sent to top officials last week was signed by Raymond F. DuBois, a deputy undersecretary of defense. A similar memo, sent by David S.C. Chu, a defense undersecretary, to the Army, Navy and Air Force, did not make distinctions between political appointees and career executives. Chu said that the highest raises should go to "your top performers" and that raises for others should be "based on their relative standing."
