Federal Diary Live

The Post's Stephen Barr is the author of The Federal Diary , which runs Monday through Friday in the Business news section. Steve has been a reporter and editor at The Post since 1979, including stints as Federal Page editor, congressional editor and a National staff writer covering federal management and workplace issues. He began writing the column in May 2000, and takes the column live to answer your questions Wednesdays at noon ET .

The transcript follows.

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Stephen Barr: Thanks to all of you joining in this discussion today. Spring is here, Congress is taking up appropriations bills, and will soon make decisions on the 2007 pay raise. The Office of Personnel Management has selected vendors to offer enhanced dental and vision benefits to federal employees by year's end, an event that I expect many of you will be eager to see take place. On a more troubling note, it seems clear that morale problems continue at the Department of Homeland Security, especially FEMA, and at the CIA. It's interesting to note, though, that intelligence community employees, as a hole, seem satisfied with their jobs and the work they are doing. We need dedicated folks to keep this government going! With that, on to the questions.

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Burke, Va.: Hi Steve,

The military has bonuses for finding recruits and for re-enlisting. Should the civil service (especially with the potential brain drain) follow suit? Or would this be a "good idea with no $$$ attached" like student loan repayments etc? Which, alas seems to be the norm these days!

Stephen Barr: Interesting question, and one that OMB and OPM should study. Just today, the Pentagon announced it is raising the maximum pay for foreign language proficiency from $300 a month to $1,000 a month. It's clear that Defense believes that supplemental pay and bonuses help with recruitment and retention.

I think you hit the key with your reference to $$$ attached. Congress almost always supports the military bonus and pay programs with appropriations, so that Defense has the money in hand to make the programs work. I'm not sure that is the case at non-defense agencies, which typically are authorized to offer a flexibility--like student loan reimbursements--but not always the dollars to support the program.

Extra pay and bonuses often complicate pay administration--things can get pretty complicated when you offer so many variations in pay. But in the computer age, it ought to be easy to keep track and avoid mismanagement, right?

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Chicago, Ill.:

In your May 2nd column, "OPM Director Springer made a pitch to would-be retirees to stay on the job as long as possible. She urged them to think about remaining in the federal service to help their agencies cope with the generational transition that is coming."

I don't see the details of this pitch anywhere on the OPM Web site. If she wants retirement eligible employees to stay on the job, REAL tangible incentives have to be offered. How about: offering more annual leave, letting one cash in unused sick leave at retirement, a pension benefit bonus for staying an additional 3-4 years??

Otherwise, her pitch is all talk and trying to get by on the cheap!! An amount invested on incentives would pale in comparison to what has been expended in the liberation of Iraq. Your thoughts??

Stephen Barr: Linda Springer is a decent person who is trying to enlarge a policy debate and look to the future. Hopefully, she can move Congress along to accept the administration's first step, which is a rule revision that allows people to work part-time at the end of their careers without taking a hit on their pensions.

Your ideas point up that more creative solutions need to be placed on the table. Hopefully, OPM can create consensus for change in this area.

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Bowie, Md.: OPM Director Linda Springer has recently been speaking about the need to increase retention (delay full retirement) of senior employees as one way of dealing with the possibly of significantly larger numbers of employees retiring over the next decade. She noted that the President's 2007 budget proposes fixing current rules that now adversely lower pensions for employees that move to part-time work, a possible phased-retirement approach. As a federal manager in his 50s now thinking about these issues, I believe such a change is helpful but likely insufficient to stem the tide. I am wondering whether OPM or lawmakers have considered increasing annual leave and sick leave for long-time employees. This would certainly make it easier for me to stay on board. For example, federal employees with 15 years or more of service now receive 8 hrs. of annual leave each pay period. I would propose that federal employees with 30 or more years or service receive 12 hrs. and that employees with 35 or more years receive 16 hrs. Furthermore, I propose that employees with over 30 years of service receive 6 hrs of sick leave per pay period (instead of current 4 hrs). and that employees with over 35 years receive 8 hrs. of sick leave per pay period. This would assist senior employees increasingly dealing their own health issues as well many have elder care responsibilities. Increasing annual and sick leave for long-time federal employees is a very concrete, deserved enhancement that I believe would entice many employees to remain in public service longer.

Stephen Barr: Hi, Bowie. It does seem to me that Linda Springer is urging would-be retirees to hang in a little longer, probably because of concerns about potential brain-drains in agencies. Policy-makers are becoming sensitive to what can happen when you let a FEMA or a CIA lose too many career people in too short of a time period.

Now, more generous leave arrangements would make a difference to some people, I think. But this seems like a difficult sell because of budget considerations and obligations.

However, it does seem feasible that OPM could devise a phased retirement schedule--where employees work X days and draw some pay and a partial annuity, keep a little TSP going and pick up a little leave, etc.

I think phased retirement would be most attractive for senior executives. We need them to mentor careerists and political appointees. Any thoughts out there on these issues, folks?

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Arlington, Va.: Given the expected shortage of federal employees, can the agency hold up retirement dates (such as the military does with soldiers)?

Stephen Barr: Hmmmm...I've never heard of a non-defense agency issuing so-called stop-loss orders. I would guess that agencies try to coax valued hands into staying a bit longer, under the guise of transition planning.

We're open to help on this query....

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Civil service hiring worries, but no hurry: If the civil service could streamline their hiring practices I would imagine they could draw more applicants. My wife and I came to D.C. hoping to serve, but were put off by months long application processes and bureaucratic bungling. Instead we went with the private sector (resume, interview, done in a couple weeks).

Stephen Barr: Well, yes. This is a different, though related, bucket of worms. My recent columns on the coming retirement wave flooded me with e-mails from a variety of folks (including an ex-Marine officer with a Ph.D.) who said they had dropped out of the federal job hunt because of their frustrations with agency hiring practices.

OPM officials say they have been working on improvements to hiring practices for the last five years, but my readers clearly don't see it happening.

Now that you are relocated to D.C., perhaps you can again look at public service at another juncture in your working life? Government needs the best these days.

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Re: good idea with no $$$ attached: There are agencies out there that do give out loan repayments. They are generally the ones that have done massive buy-outs to get rid of the GS-15 dead weight and have a lot more people at entry level. I know that in my division, about 30 people are eligible and we all have gotten loan repayment.

Stephen Barr: Thanks. Good to hear you're in the money!

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Fairfax, Va.: On the other end of the spectrum, OPM should also develop plans to recruit more younger workers with more annual leave, a greater TSP match, and greater education/loan repayment options.

Stephen Barr: Good ideas, and they all cost money when applied to 1.8 million employees, potentially.

But I do think there is room for improvement in the area of leave and vacation. Younger workers, especially those starting families, and those with kids in the household, need more flexible leave arrangements, based on comments in previous Diary Live discussions.

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Centreville, Va.: Bowie's suggestion of additional annual leave for long time employees would amount to 8 to 10 weeks per year. So, you basically want full-time pay for part-time work. And that doesn't include the additional sick leave--5 weeks per year, on top of the hundreds or even thousands of hours that long-term employees would have accrued. Sorry, but that one would be a budget buster.

One of the key issues with retiree retention is how to structure any incentives so that you keep the productive ones whose portion of the institutional memory you'd like to preserve, but don't keep the ones who have basically "retired in place" and haven't done a lick of meaningful work in many years.

Stephen Barr: Thanks much. A concise statement of the problem, I think.

a more simple approach is to select out the best to retain and shift them to a contract. No doubt that is done in some places now. Such an arrangement might diminish pay and benefits, but would give the retiree a chance to negotiate a favorable work schedule and give the agency a way to tap into institutional knowledge on short notice. How about that?

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Bethesda, Md.: Number-cruncher that I am, I LOVE the idea of a greater match. Increasing it from 5% to 10% (or even 8%) would make me VERY excited.

Do they have the raw data on how many people actually contribute MORE than the current match?

Stephen Barr: TSP has not produced any demographic data recently, so there's no good answer on contribution levels/amounts.

Generally, as I recall, past data showed that the higher income employees maxed out, contributing right up to the IRS limit.

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Bethesda, Md.: Thanks for taking my question before.

I used to max out, but now that the limit has been raised I can't -quite- manage to put aside 15,000. But it IS my goal and dream to do so within 2 years.

But I gotta tell you, when I started with the feds, that match REALLY motivated me to put aside more than I could afford at the time. And I am SO glad that I did too.

Tell the TSP to start analyzing the participants too. I'm WILD with curiosity.

Stephen Barr: Thanks, Bethesda. We probably need to urge GAO to step in on this issue. As I understand it, TSP only has data on contributions and the participant accounts; TSP does not see payroll information, such as the size of your salary. So I suspect what we need is an analyst to take data dumps from TSP and OPM and then slice it up and see what it means.

Although many FERS employees have got the message and contribute to TSP, I am concerned that lower-graded employees may not be saving enough. I struggle myself at times--kids, car payments, house payments, repair bills, etc. But saving it the key!

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Anonymous: I used to work at a Federal agency that had a number of "re-employed annuitants" on the payroll. Basically, some people were so specialized that the agency could not risk losing them, but the employees wanted partial retirement because of health or personal reasons. This is a good solution and could be much better for government agencies than granting additional annual and sick leave. After all, although some older employees need additional leave, others have so much leave they end up donating or losing leave at the end of the year.

Stephen Barr: Thanks for offering this example. A good illustration!

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St. Petersburg, Fla.: Hi. I'm a contented retiree, having put in 30 years with the Foreign Service. Has there been any movement on the Hill on letting retirees pay their health plan costs pre-tax, like our still toiling brothers and sisters? Thanks.

Stephen Barr: Now, the so-called "premium conversion" bills are languishing at the Ways and Means Committee in the House. My guess is that the committee fears that offering this tax break to government retires would inspire private-sector retirees to demand the same. (It's all about the money. Who said that?)

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Washington, D.C.: Why would giving leave cost money? It's just days off (unless you separate from the government., in which case you can collect the $$$ equivalent of the leave you have left).

Stephen Barr: I'm assuming it is paid leave--so you are drawing down dollars for no work on those days. On the other hand, I guess it could be set up as time off, with no compensation involved. Any thoughts on this query out there?

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Kearney, Mo.: Concerned about future Medicare for my children when they get to the age they will need it. The eldest child is now 52 and the youngest will turn 46 this Summer. I am now 70 and just recently joined the Medicare Prescription Plan, but only because the government said they would pay my monthly premiums which is a lot higher than I could afford, since my Medicare supplemental insurance company charged me only $36 yearly. Also the government has agreed that my prescriptions would only cost mw $2 for generic and $5 for name brand prescriptions. I complained to my children that I was concerned that if the government was going to do this, that would mean that Medicare would not last until they reached an age to use and need it. They said to go ahead because I really needed it so that I would spend the money I spent on prescriptions on food that I slighted when I had to pay for prescriptions. A logical answer but that does not make me feel any better and I still worry about their future. Any comment?

Stephen Barr: I applaud you for looking to the future, and not just to yourself.

There are huge issues confronting Medicare, involving benefits and how it is paid for in future years. The coming generations may face a larger burden that we do today.

Still, we can hope that policy knots are untied and that the U.S. economy continues to grow. Too many people are without health care, given the wealth of the nation, and Medicare is a superb safety net for older Americans.

Best of luck!

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RE: Leave costs money: because for every hour you are out when you would otherwise be working, someone else has to be paid to do your job.

Stephen Barr: Thanks for saying it so clearly.

Once again, we've run out of time. Thanks for your comments and ideas about dealing with the impending waves of retirements in government. (To the reader from Dallas, I got your comments about the HUD secretary and will relay them to a Post editor.)

Please join me here at noon next Wednesday!

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