Senator renews attacks on revised version of job competition rules

In a move reminiscent of one tried last year, lawmakers are attempting to unravel the Office of Management and Budget's latest rules on opening federal jobs to contractors, by attaching union-backed language to the fiscal 2005 Transportation-Treasury spending bill.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and General Government approved a provision Thursday that would block federal agencies from running public-private job competitions using the May 2003 revised version of OMB's Circular A-76, the Bush administration's rule book on competitive sourcing. The language passed by a vote of 9 to 6 with the support of Republicans Arlen Specter, Pa., and Christopher Bond, Mo.

The amendment is necessary because OMB's May 2003 rules put "federal employees at an unfair disadvantage," stated Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the measure's sponsor. The administration adopted the modified version in an attempt to achieve the opposite result: equity in the job competition process.

Mikulski's language would force agencies to revert to the version of Circular A-76 in use before the May 2003 changes, but stops short of banning job contests altogether.

Rep. Christopher Van Hollen, D-Md., a year ago succeeded in attaching similar language to the House version of the fiscal 2004 Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill. The White House promptly issued a veto threat. Later in the fall, the full Senate narrowly defeated a companion measure offered by Mikulski.

Van Hollen has not decided whether he will introduce the same amendment on the House side this year, but is "still considering options," said Marilyn Campbell, a spokeswoman.

The American Federation of Government Employees applauded Mikulski's subcommittee-level victory. "This is the second time in less than a day [that] the Senate has dealt a bipartisan blow to the Bush administration's reckless wholesale privatization agenda," AFGE President John Gage stated, counting as the first time the Senate's Wednesday vote to bar the Homeland Security Department from completing a contest for more than 1,100 immigration services jobs.

But the Contract Services Association, an industry group, called Mikulski's provision a "slap at all those involved-from both the federal and private sectors-in the intensive effort to rewrite the old, widely discredited OMB Circular A-76." In a statement criticizing the measure, CSA President Chris Jahn noted that federal employees have prevailed in the vast majority of contests completed using the modified rules.