Security agency to eliminate millions in retention allowances

The Homeland Security Department's Federal Protective Service recently announced that it plans to end a retention allowance program that benefits hundreds of police and investigators, as it continues to fight a funding shortfall.

Officials with FPS and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, of which FPS is a part, informed regional directors, inspectors and police officers over the holiday weekend that group retention allowances will be discontinued for law enforcement personnel at the GS-4 through GS-12 levels.

The change will take effect on Jan. 6, 2007, ICE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management Theresa Bertucci and FPS Acting Director Dean Hunter said in a memorandum.

"As you know," the memo stated, "efforts have been under way to identify strategies for FPS to operate within the revenue it collects for mission-essential services provided."

The move sparked outrage at one FPS union office. Ronald Greenhill, regional vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Homeland Security Local 918, told union members in a memorandum that the retention allowance cut represents an "insult" and an "attack" on FPS officers and investigators.

"I have a wife, kids and payments; the loss of the retention pay will greatly affect how I am able to maintain my current way of life," Greenhill wrote. He encouraged "every single one of" the union members to begin a campaign of daily calls to ICE and DHS leadership and to their elected representatives, to try to reverse the decision.

The retention allowances were first offered in 2002 in an effort to keep FPS police and investigators from taking other jobs or leaving the agency, and have been included in eligible employees' paychecks for the last five years. They are bonuses equivalent to between 5 and 10 percent of FPS workers' pay, an ICE spokesman said.

The retention allowances currently cost the agency about $3 million per fiscal year, according Dean Boyd, the spokesman. The decision to eliminate them will affect about 700 police officers and investigators, Boyd said.

Multiple sources said the FPS budget shortfall has grown to $60 million. The agency is responsible for helping secure thousands of federal facilities nationwide, using both federal guards and contractors. Agencies must reimburse FPS for the services, and problems collecting payments have contributed to the shortfall.

The agency was supposed to have delivered by Nov. 1 a memorandum to congressional appropriations committees detailing how its budget problems developed, and how officials plan to resolve them. But multiple Capitol Hill sources confirmed the report has yet to arrive. Boyd said the report is complete, but is undergoing various stages of clearance at multiple agencies.