Congress approved legislation Thursday that ensures federal
employees in Monterey County, Calif., will retain their special
locality pay through 2004 no matter what decision the Federal
Salary Council makes in October.
Under a “sense of Congress” amendment offered by Rep. Sam Farr,
D-Calif., to the fiscal 2004 Transportation-Treasury
appropriations bill, the Federal Salary Council would be
prohibited from eliminating any special locality pay areas until
2005.
“My amendment essentially states that Congress believes current
locality pay areas should be held harmless over the next year,”
Farr said on the House floor Thursday. “We ask that [the Office of
Personnel Management] not eliminate any current locality pay area,
but we do not object to OPM adding any new areas.”
The government established the locality pay system under the
1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act. Federal workers in
31 metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Washington and San
Francisco, receive special locality pay, based on the cost of
labor in each city. Outside the 31 areas, federal workers in the
48 contiguous states are covered by the “Rest of the U.S.”
locality pay category. Each year the Federal Salary Council, a
panel of government officials and federal union leaders, makes a
recommendation on locality pay areas to the President's Pay Agent,
a group that includes OPM Director Kay Coles James, Labor
Secretary Elaine Chao and Office of Management and Budget Director
Joshua Bolten. The Pay Agent then makes a recommendation to the
president.
This year, the group decided to hold off on making changes to
locality pay areas because OMB was revising its metropolitan
statistical areas (MSAs) and consolidated metropolitan statistical
areas, which are defined using population, population density and
commuting information. In the past, locality pay areas have been
developed using MSAs. In 1999, Monterey County, Calif., was added
to the San Francisco locality pay area, but the
redrawn MSA lines may lead to the loss of special locality pay for
the county, affecting the salaries of more than 4,000 federal
employees. According to Farr, who testified before the Federal
Salary Council on Wednesday, the cost–of-living in Monterey County
is as high as that of San Francisco and San Jose and the
elimination of locality pay could send federal employees packing.
“If Monterey federal agencies are going to have any hope of
recruiting and retaining qualified and talented people in the
federal workforce, maintaining the highest possible locality pay
we can is imperative,” one Monterey County federal employee wrote
in an Aug. 27 letter to the council.
A working group within the council is expected to make
recommendations to the full council in the next few weeks. The
council's options include adopting the new MSAs, sticking with the
old MSAs or developing its own locality pay areas. The council is
expected to make a decision on the matter when it meets again on
Oct. 7.
Farr said his amendment would give the council time to “do the
research right and to draw up a fair and defensible plan for
locality pay boundary designations.”
“I will do everything in my power to ensure federal employees
in Monterey County do not see a decrease in their paycheck,” Farr
said. “The issue is too complex and too sensitive to figure out in
a month. Thousands of federal employee paychecks and, consequently
federal agency missions, hang in the balance.”
