Much Ado About GAO Bonuses

The headline in The Hill today is a grabber: "GAO Executives Got Bonuses as Others Were Denied Raises." While the agency denied 17 percent of its employees cost-of-living allowances last year, executives and other senior-level employees at the agency took home a total of more than $900,000 in bonuses.

I'm having a little trouble seeing what the scandal is here. The employees were denied raises on the grounds they were overpaid relative to their occupational peers. The jury is still out on whether that decision was fair, but it doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not executives deserved the bonuses they received. If they did good work -- and especially if it was work unrelated to the issue of compensation for the GAO analysts who were denied raises -- why shouldn't they get bonuses?

Executive bonuses represent less than one half of 1 percent of the agency's overall personnel costs, the agency reports. GAO executives get bonuses at a lower rate than their counterparts in executive branch agencies, and at slightly smaller amounts. And in case you're wondering, GAO chief David Walker hasn't received any bonuses in the past two years.