Federal Daily - September 25, 2009

NATCA Ratifies 3-Year Pact With FAA

Ending a three-year labor-management standoff, National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) members ratified a new three-year contract with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NATCA said on Sept. 23. The NATCA vote did not include articles concerning pay—which were resolved through an earlier binding arbitration process—and members were voting only on a set of new work rules agreed to by both NATCA and FAA, said NATCA President Patrick Forrey. “The members of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association overwhelmingly approved a collective bargaining agreement with the FAA,” Forrey said. “It is a testament to our membership that they have endured the worst time in our union’s history, working towards and holding out for a contract that was negotiated in a fair process and agreed to by the parties.” The mediated agreement provides employees with greater flexibility in their work schedules, childcare support, a new grievance review process, and a variety of other gains. At the same time, it affords FAA the flexibility to more effectively redeploy labor to congested airports using controller incentive pay. The contract takes effect Oct. 1. To see more, go to: www.natca.org/rss/contract-ratification-092309.aspx.

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VA OIG Faults Management Practices for VBA Claim Delays

The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) had 11,099 claims pending for more than a year, largely due to inefficient management practices at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) regional offices which handled the claims, said a VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report. The report, released Sept. 23, also found that the average claim had been pending for 448 days. According to the report, inefficient VA regional office workload management caused avoidable processing delays averaging 187 days for a projected 10,046 (90.5 percent) of the 11,099 rating claims. And, at least $14.4 million in monthly benefit payments were unnecessarily delayed by an average of eight months because of the deficiencies. The OIG found that the worst cases involved delayed benefit payments totaling $64,990 for one claimant and a benefit payment delay of 27 months for another. Rep. Glenn Nye, D-Va., called on VA to immediately adopt a range of recommendations offered by OIG to address the problems. “Resolving this situation must be a top priority,” Nye said, “and no matter the failures of the past, the mission still stands: to provide timely and adequate care and benefits that our veterans have earned, need and deserve.” To see more, go to: http://nye.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=24&parentid=
23&sectiontree=23,24&itemid=259 (Nye) or the report at, www.va.gov/oig/52/reports/2009/VAOIG-08-03156-227.pdf.

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Lack of Training, Planning Still Impedes FPS Mission, GAO Says

The lack of adequate staff training and insufficient human capital planning is impeding the Federal Protective Service (FPS) in its mission to protect government employees and workplaces, said a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The report, released Sept. 23, looked at how well FPS had responded to earlier criticisms that it was not adequately overseeing its 15,000 contract guards and responding to new human capital priorities. Although FPS appears to have made gains in contract oversight, progress is difficult to judge because the service has not developed a risk management framework or a human capital plan, the report said. Without such a framework, it is difficult to tell whether the changes are making things more secure, the report said. For example, FPS is requiring its regions to conduct more guard inspections at Level IV facilities (those with more than 450 employees and high public contact) and provide more X-ray and magnetometer training. However, FPS does not have a reliable system to track whether its 11 regions are completing these new requirements and cannot say with certainty that the requirements are being implemented. And while FPS has conducted activities such as building security assessments (BSAs), the service does not have the capacity to compare risks from building to building. The report also raised troubling questions about the accuracy of such BSAs. One regional supervisor reported that he rejected a BSA after he found that the law enforcement security officer who assembled it had copied and pasted from previous assessments. In another case, it quickly became apparent that the officer had never personally visited the site described in the BSA because what he referred to as “a large building” was in fact a vacant plot of land, the report said. To see more, go to: www.gao.gov/highlights/d091047thigh.pdf

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Health Care Amendment Targets Feds

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), formerly little known outside the federal government, has been singled out in many healthcare discussions as a model program. But one legislator, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, is proposing legislation that would require elected officials and all federal employees to purchase coverage through state-based insurance exchanges rather than through the FEHBP. One of hundreds of amendments to the healthcare reform bill—America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009—Grassley’s amendment would move feds into the same state insurance exchanges proposed in the main bill to offer private insurance options to consumers. Under Grassley’s amendment, the change would take effect in 2013. To see “Grassley Amendment #C 3,” go to: http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/091909
%20AHFA%20Coverage%20Amendments.pdf.

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