Lawmakers Approve Bonus Ban For Bad Feds

A Senate panel on Wednesday approved bipartisan legislation that would prohibit federal employees who break the law or aren’t in good standing with their agencies from receiving bonuses.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reported out the 2015 Stop Wasteful Bonuses Act, which would bar agency heads from awarding bonuses to employees who could be fired or suspended for violating agency policy, or for doing something illegal that could land them in prison for more than a year. The ban for those employees would last for five years. Agency inspectors general, senior ethics officials or the Government Accountability Office would determine whether an employee’s conduct violated agency policy.

The bill also includes a mandatory clawback provision requiring the employee to repay -- after notice and an opportunity for a hearing -- the amount of any bonus made during the year in which such a determination is made.

“We’re talking about very serious misconduct,” said the bill’s sponsor Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., during Wednesday’s markup. Ayotte said the legislation would maintain due process for employees, including the right to appeal an agency’s decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The New Hampshire senator said her goal is to make sure that employees who “deserve to be recognized for their performance are” and that bad actors don’t benefit from bonuses when they engage in wrongdoing. Republican Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri are co-sponsors. Ayotte and McCaskill have introduced similar bills before.

Agencies already can withhold bonuses from employees engaged in misconduct if they choose to, according to Cheri Cannon, a partner at Tully Rinckey, a federal sector labor and employment law firm in Washington. Cannon, who spoke to Government Executive in March when the legislation was introduced, said at the time that the bill is another example of Congress drafting legislation to create laws in an area where agencies already have discretion. 

“Several agencies and programs within agencies of which I am aware, already do withhold bonuses from classes of employees, such as senior executives, if they have substantiated IG findings against them,” said Cannon. “Mere suspicion or allegations of misconduct are not enough.” 

S. 742 was among several bills the committee approved during the Wednesday markup, including one (S. 1616) aimed at improving the detection and prevention of government charge card abuse and another (S. 1580) which seeks to streamline the federal hiring process. The latter, dubbed the 2015 Competitive Service Act, would allow agencies to share information on job applicants. Currently, agencies with similar hiring needs cannot share assessments of applicants with each other. S. 1580, introduced by Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would let agencies collaborate on competitive service certificates when looking to fill a position in the same occupational series and within a similar grade level. Tester and Portman backed similar legislation in the last Congress, though the measure fizzled despite receiving bipartisan support in both chambers.

The committee also reported out legislation that aims to better protect federal retirees from nefarious financial representatives seeking to steal their benefits. The 2015 Representative Payee Fraud Prevention Act, which Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., sponsored, would give U.S. attorneys the statutory authority to prosecute retiree representatives who misuse funds from the Federal Employees Retirement System and the Civil Service Retirement System. The bill classifies misuse of such benefits as a felony, and provides the same protections that veterans and Social Security recipients receive. Under the representative payee program, a person or an organization manages benefits for recipients who are unable to do so for themselves.

The panel on Wednesday also approved the nomination of Carol Ochoa to be inspector general of the General Services Administration.

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