Archived News From Headquarters
VA to close 3 hospitals,
build 3 in health care reform
Related: Detailed list of planned changes
Anthony Principi, secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, will
announce the decisions in Las Vegas today. They call for closing a
hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, outside Cleveland; one in Gulfport, Miss.;
and one of three facilities in Pittsburgh. The agency will build new
hospitals in Orlando, in Las Vegas and outside Denver to meet growing
demand.
Related:
State-by-state breakdown
The department also plans to build 156 new outpatient clinics in 33 states
to serve an aging population. They are to be built over the next eight
years. Eight smaller hospitals will lose inpatient beds.
The decisions are part of a sweeping reassessment of the VA health car
system, which serves more than 7 million veterans. They are the final step
of a nearly five-year-long review process triggered by a 1999 General
Accounting Office report. It found that the VA wastes as much as $1
million a day maintaining vacant and under-used properties.
The VA system operates 162 hospitals and nearly 800 outpatient clinics.
Many of its hospitals are on expansive campuses, some of them former
military bases that date back to the Civil War. Many are in need of
renovation and ill-suited for modern medical practice.
Principi's decisions, approved by President Bush, will take effect unless
Congress blocks them within 60 days. Congress' support is needed in order
to fund the projects.
The decisions reflect big population and demographic shifts. Veterans are
aging and moving to the South and West, leaving the VA with vacant beds in
the North and huge demand for care in the Sunbelt.
Principi accepted most of the recommendations made in February by a
16-member commission. He ordered further studies before deciding whether
to close VA hospitals in Boston, New York City, Walla Walla, Wash., and
elsewhere.
Department of Labor Speaks Out
A new report by former Department of Labor officials finds the Bush
overtime pay take-away will harm working families and take overtime pay from
"large numbers" of workers. The three authors of the report, released today, are
government experts who worked at the U.S. Department of Labor under both
Republicans and Democrats beginning in the 1980s under President Reagan.
The bottom line conclusion by these independent experts:
"...implementation of
these new regulations will harm rather than promote and protect the interests
of U.S. workers and their families."
And,
The Bush regulation,
"removes existing overtime protection for large numbers of employees currently
entitled to the law's protections"
We've been saying that for months. Now experts who have
dedicated their careers to the most technical aspects of wage and hours laws
agree.
It is really important that as many people as possible join the fight to
save overtime pay. One of the most important ways you can help is to
let your friends, family and co-workers know about this new report and that
action is needed before it is too late.
Please reach out to your friends, family and co-workers by clicking on the
link below.
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/fax4otpay/forward/
Or, you can forward them this link with a note in your own words.
Forward this link >>
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/fax4otpay/
The Bush administration's final regulation that would take away overtime
pay from millions of America's workers becomes effective Aug. 23. In just a few
short weeks, employers could begin to reclassify their employees as
exempt--denying them the right to overtime pay. That is why action right now is
so important.
Explanation of the Bush overtime pay take-away.
http://www.saveovertimepay.org/bushproposal.htm
New study by former government experts.
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/ns07132004.cfm
Federal Workers Score a Victory
Clay Johnson III, OMB's deputy director for management, said the report
confirms Bush's belief that requiring federal employees to compete for
their jobs promotes government efficiency, even when the work stays
in-house. Congress this year required agencies to report annually on
competitive sourcing efforts amid concerns that the initiative was taking
money away from programs.
"The real savings comes because of competition, because of the challenge
of finding the most effective way of doing it," Johnson said in an
interview. " . . . You ought to always be looking for the most efficient
and effective way to do something."
Federal employee union leaders dismissed claims of savings as inaccurate
and unrealistic. They renewed their criticism of the Bush initiative as an
unproductive effort that wastes resources, scares employees and rewards
contractors for supporting the administration.
"Anytime there is anything close to a fair competition, we do well," said
John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees,
the largest federal employee union. Gage also said there should be an
independent review of projected savings.
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union,
called such projections "fiction." That's because agencies, at the
direction of OMB, do not include the costs of diverting workers from their
regular duties to work on preparing the in-house bid, she said. Costs
incurred before the announcement of a competition, such as assessing
workloads and evaluating how offices could be reorganized, also are not
counted.
Also, many in-house teams win only by agreeing to trim the workforce,
limiting services, Kelley said.
"After a public-private competition for federal work, there often simply
aren't enough agency employees left to provide the service at the level
the public wants, needs and expects," she said in a statement.
Contractor groups also objected to the report, saying the high win rate by
federal employees raises concerns that the competitions were not fair.
Several earlier government studies found that federal workers typically
win public-private competitions about 60 percent of the time.
Stan Z. Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, said
savings would be even greater with "real competition."
"When you have a 90 percent rate for either side, you have a process
that's clearly out of balance," Soloway said. "In the private sector there
is tremendous concern about the credibility of the process and the
program, since very little real competition seems to be taking place."
Chris Jahn, president of Contract Services Association of America, said,
"The deck is being stacked against private companies."
"At some point, if these competitions continue to be drastically
one-sided, the private sector will stop playing," Jahn said in a
statement. "The taxpayer will be the loser in the long run."
Of 17,595 federal jobs studied in competitions last year, 15,660 jobs, or
89 percent, were found to be best-performed by federal civil servants, the
OMB report said. Agencies determined that the work done by 1,935 federal
employees could be handled more efficiently by private contractors.
Moreover, agencies transferred work done by 4,309 more federal employees
to the private sector without even conducting competitions. Such "direct
conversions" are being discouraged and phased out, Johnson said, and were
not included in computing the 89 percent win figure for federal employees.
Johnson noted that employees do not automatically lose their jobs when
work is moved to the private sector. Some are reassigned within agencies,
while others may be offered jobs with contractors and some may be offered
buyouts.
"This is not anti-employee," Johnson said of the initiative.
The experience of agencies varied widely, according to the report. The
Defense Department, the government's largest, completed competitions
involving more than 9,200 positions last year, with 81 percent of the jobs
staying in-house. Meanwhile, no competitions were completed at such
agencies as the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security,
the Smithsonian and OMB.
Several agencies that ran job competitions reported a net loss of money,
including the Agriculture Department ($3.6 million), the Social Security
Administration ($78,000) and the Environmental Protection Agency ($7,100).
Johnson said such deficits are less likely to happen as agencies gain
experience with the process.
"We now have a base of information to continue to discuss this with
Congress and with the agencies," he said, "and a base of best practices
and worst practices and real solid experience -- as opposed to anecdotes-- to build upon to get even better about it as we go forward. . . . It'sa very positive sign for the taxpayers and it's a very positive sign for
what the federal employees are capable of doing."
This story was carried in the
Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Federal Employees Who
Took Military Leave Before 2001 May Be Entitled to $$$$
By: Mathew B. Tully,
Esq and Greg Rinckey, Esq.
NOTE: Tully & Associates, PLLC will provide legal services at
no cost to the employee for any federal
civilian employee eligible for compensation due to this recent court decision.
They may be contacted by calling
518-218-7100.
A federal appeals court in
Butterbaugh v. Department of Justice,
336 F.3d 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2003); has ruled that the Justice Department which
was following OPM rules, improperly charged employees for military leave prior
to 2001.
Under 5 U.S.C. §6323(a)(1), federal employees who are
reservists are allowed “15 days” of annual paid leave for reserve or National
Guard training. (The Court used the terms reservist and reserve training to
include National Guard members and their obligations.) The petitioners in this
case are full-time employees of the Justice Department, Bureau of Prisons at
the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, PA.
Prior to 2001, the
Justice Department, as had other federal agencies, included days employees
were not scheduled to work but would be at reserve training when calculating
how much leave an employee used. For example, the court noted that “an
employee (with a Monday-Friday workweek) attending reserve training from one
Friday through the next would be charged for eight days of military leave,
even though the employee was absent for only six workdays.” The Court also
noted that this policy was applied unevenly, in that non workdays at the
beginning or the end of military leave were not counted, but non workdays that
fell during the military leave were counted. Under the example above, an
employee whose workweek ran Thursday to Monday had more leave counted against
him than an employee whose workweek ran Monday to Friday.
In 2000, Congress
amended subsection 6323(a)(3) which sets forth the minimum charge for leave.
Subsequently, the Office of Personnel Management “determined that, in light of
the new subsection…§6323(a)(1) could no longer be interpreted to charge
non-workdays against federal employees’ military leave.”
Petitioners filed claims with the Merit System Protection
Board claiming that, because of the calculations of military leave, they were
forced to use vacation or unpaid leave in order to meet their reserve training
obligations. They argued that the Justice Department's policy violated the
1994 Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act "by denying them a
benefit of employment based on their military service."
Based on its interpretation of the statute, MSPB ruled that
the Justice Department had properly calculated the four employees’ military
leave and that petitioners were not denied a benefit of their employment. In
its ruling, MSPB concluded that Congress had intended to count calendar days
against the 15 day allowance, not just workdays.
In a ruling dated July 24, 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit overturned the MSPB's decision. The Court ruled that
agencies should have interpreted the statute to allow 15 workdays of leave for
reserve training. The Court stated that “as a general matter, employees are
not accountable to their employers for time that are not required to
work…[there is] no reason why federal employees need military leave for days
on which they are not scheduled to work.”
MSPB had argued that Congress knew or should have known how
agencies were applying the requirements of the statutes and because Congress
did not amend the statute, it must have therefore approved of its application.
The Court disagreed with this contention, stating "…congressional inaction is
perhaps the weakest of all tools for ascertaining legislative intent, and
courts are loath to presume congressional endorsement unless the issue plainly
has been the subject of congressional attention."
The Court reversed the MSPB’s decision and remanded the case
for further proceedings. One Justice dissented in a separate ruling.
(c) 2004, Tully &
Associates, PLLC, 3 Wembly Court, Albany, New York 12205, (518) 218-7100 and
online at
www.fedattorney.com
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