Locality Pay Map for 2006 Replaces Three Metropolitan Areas

The president's pay advisers have redrawn the "locality pay" map for 2006, dropping three metropolitan areas and adding three new ones.

Kansas City, Orlando and St. Louis are out, and Buffalo, Phoenix and Raleigh are in, according to a report posted this week on the Web site of the Office of Personnel Management.

The decision to redraw the locality map means that employees in Buffalo, Phoenix and Raleigh can expect to receive higher-than-average pay raises in coming years, while the pay of workers in the other three cities will rise more slowly.

Most federal employees receive an annual raise based on two components: an increase provided across the board and an increase based on wage trends in local labor markets.

The three cities losing locality pay status will be merged into a catchall category, known as "rest of U.S.," for General Schedule employees who work outside 31 specially designated metropolitan areas. The pay advisers said they could no longer justify keeping Kansas City, Orlando and St. Louis as separate pay areas because their wage disparities have been close to or below the measurement for employees in the catchall category.

The decision to change the locality pay status of those areas involved complex measurements of pay disparities between federal employees and those in the private sector with comparable jobs.

According to the most recent calculations, the pay for federal jobs lags behind that for comparable nonfederal jobs by 16.06 percent, on average. Members of Congress, especially in the Washington area, cite the pay gap as a reason to support higher salaries for the civil service.

But the methodology used to calculate the pay gap has been controversial almost from the start. Some officials contend that the government overpays in some occupations and underpays in others. Efforts are underway to use a new compensation survey that would collect more accurate data.

In a memo to the president, administration pay advisers recommended against using the current formula to determine locality raises in January 2006. The advisers are the secretary of labor and the directors of OPM and the Office of Management and Budget.

The advisers describe the 2006 locality pay changes "as an interim measure, pending fundamental reforms in the federal white-collar pay system."

The departments of Defense and Homeland Security are phasing in new pay systems that will more closely tie pay raises to job performance, and the Bush administration has suggested that performance-based systems should be expanded across the government in coming years.

Farewell at Homeland Security

Melissa J. Allen, one of the architects of the new pay and personnel system at the Department of Homeland Security, retires today after 37 years of federal service.

Allen took the position of senior human resources adviser in January 2003 when the department's management team was created. She helped write the regulation that moves most Homeland Security employees out of the 15-grade General Schedule pay system and into a performance-based system featuring broader salary ranges and simplified occupational groupings. She also played a key role in briefing federal unions, employee groups and think tanks on the development of the new system.

Her career began as a management intern with the Navy. She subsequently worked at the Treasury Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Transportation Department, where she served as assistant secretary for administration.

Talk Shows

Ronald P. Sanders, associate director of strategic human resources policy at OPM, will discuss the new Homeland Security personnel system on "FEDtalk" at 11 a.m. today on federalnewsradio.com.

Fran Mainella, director of the National Park Service, will be the guest on the "IBM Business of Government Hour" at 9 a.m. tomorrow on WJFK radio (106.7 FM).

"Bush, Term Two" will be the topic for discussion on the Imagene B. Stewart call-in program at 8 a.m. Sunday on WOL radio (1450 AM).

E-mail: barrs@washpost.com