Replacement Boomers

As federal agencies become increasingly concerned about losing baby boomers who are reaching retirement age, they are looking to pick up experienced workers from the private sector to fill the gaps. Hence the announcement last week of the Partnership for Public Service's FedExperience program involving IBM and the Treasury Department.

Also last week, the Dallas Morning News reported on the Senior Environmental Employment Program, under which 1,500 people 55 and older have been hired to work on a full- or part-time basis at the Environmental Protection Agency as clerical staff, data administrators, engineers and inspectors. The program is run by the National Older Worker Career Center, which manages a similar effort for the Agriculture Department and is looking to extend its reach to other agencies. Private sector workers seem eager to sign up, given the generous federal benefits they can receive after working for the government for only a few years.

This seems all well and good, but here are a couple of caveats:

• Bringing a lot of new baby boomers into government could end up costing taxpayers a lot of money. Last year, the Bush administration implicitly recognized this by including a proposal in its fiscal 2008 budget to scale back the government's contribution to health care premiums for new federal retirees with less than a decade of government service. The government's current subsidy is "the envy of many people in the private sector," said OPM Director Linda M. Springer. (That proposal hasn't gone anywhere on Capitol Hill yet, and federal labor unions have vowed to fight it.)
• Recruiting replacement boomers shouldn't come at the expense of giving the people who have been in government a long time, but who are not retiring soon, a shot at the top career jobs in agencies. The last thing the government needs is to force out talented younger people by denying them the chance at advancement for which they have patiently been waiting.