Houses passes amendment to halt job competitions

For the third year in a row, the House has approved an amendment that bars the use of federal funds to conduct job competitions under rules established by the Office of Management and Budget.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who introduced the amendment to the fiscal 2006 Treasury-Transportation appropriations bill (H.R. 3058), said its intent was not to stop all job competitions, but to force the Office of Management and Budget to revise the rules, which Van Hollen said were unfair to federal employees.

In the previous two years, the language has been dropped from the bill during negotiations with the Senate before the measure was passed into law.

If the amendment were signed into law, it effectively would prohibit the use of the current job competition rules at all agencies because the amendment prohibits funds from going to OMB to implement the rules.

In a letter to other members of Congress, Van Hollen said he wanted to "give OMB a second chance to rewrite the privatization process in a way that truly promotes the interests of taxpayers and customers and more equitably balances the interests of federal employees and contractors." The current rules were rewritten in May 2003.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., sent a letter to colleagues urging them to vote against the amendment. He said the current rules are "the product of a two-year effort that included discussions and negotiations with all stakeholders, including federal employee groups and private sector companies."

"The Van Hollen amendment would prohibit the administration from using this carefully crafted revised process and bring us back to the bad old days of the old discredited procedures," Davis added.

Federal employee unions, which had lobbied in favor of the amendment, were pleased by the vote. Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the amendment "will go a long way toward ensuring a fair competition process that spends taxpayer dollars wisely."

The White House had expressed concern Wednesday about a number of potential amendments to the Transportation-Treasury bill in a statement of administration policy on the legislation, but only listed the Van Hollen amendment in passing.

"We note the relatively muted level of opposition in the OMB's assessment of the Van Hollen amendment, and we believe that it represents an understanding that the privatization process must be meaningfully revised," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Matthew Biggs, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said he would like to see the current job competition rules replaced with the Truthfulness, Responsibility and Accountability in Contracting Act, which Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., introduced in 2001.

At that time, Angela Styles, the former administrator of OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, said the act would severely hamper government contracting.