No results, no bonus

A House committee wants to block bonuses for some government executives whose agencies failed to meet pre-set goals. In what could be the first use of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act to penalize executives personally, the House version of the Transportation Appropriations bill would cut executive bonuses at the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration next year. "This year, the committee has reviewed agency performance plans and matched the results to the provision of executive bonuses," says the House Appropriations Committee report on the 2002 spending bill (H.R. 2299). "In too many cases, the committee has discovered little or no linkage between the achievement of goals and the provision of bonuses to the executives leading those organizations. The committee will not allow this situation to continue." The committee found that the FAA in fiscal 2000 gave $250,000 in bonuses to 42 executives in its largest operating unit, even though the unit failed to meet its five performance goals. The agency handed out $1,000,000 in executive bonuses in 2001, the report said. "The committee intends to hold senior officials accountable in the agency, a result which cannot be achieved if bonuses are handed out indiscriminately. The committee recommendation reduces the amount of funding available for bonuses by one-half," the report said. FAA officials, in response, said that executives only received bonuses for performance goals that were met. Furthermore, some of the goals for the air traffic control operations, the agency's largest operating unit, were met. But for those goals that weren't met, no bonuses were given. Agency officials said that only 69 percent of the bonuses available to executives this year were awarded. They contended that the agency is one of the best in government at tying executive bonuses to specific performance goals. Meanwhile, the committee also recommended that Congress cut the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's executive bonus budget by one-seventh, or $20,000. The agency was supposed to increase safety belt usage from about 70 percent to 85 percent by 2000, but usage stayed at about 71 percent, the committee report said. "It is not clear whether the agency is linking the award of bonuses to the attainment of performance plan goals," the report said. Tim Hurd, a spokesman for the highway safety agency, confirmed that executives in charge of the seat belt use goal received bonuses, but he noted that seat belt use was only one of their goals. Hurd said that bonuses are tied to executives' performance plans, and that Transportation Department staffers are talking with the Appropriations Committee staff about the provision. Hurd would not elaborate. Robert Shea, a staffer on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does a good job of setting goals and developing methods to reach those goals. Still, he added: "While this is a punitive example, it demonstrates how we can use performance information to better allocate scarce resources. And if more committees do this, agencies will start paying attention and will produce better information." Donald Kettl, a public administration professor at the University of Wisconsin, said lawmakers have asked agency officials tough questions about their Government Performance and Results Act plans in the past, but until now, Congress had not attempted to tie GPRA with executive pay. "This case frames the key question: Is GPRA the central measure of government performance?" Kettl said. "If agencies give top managers bonuses even when they don't meet GPRA targets, they are saying that other goals are more important than GPRA. With these decisions, the appropriations [panel] is saying otherwise--that GPRA is a key measure of agency success, and there will be no bonuses for managers that fail to meet GPRA targets." Richard Nathan, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., said the congressional action is appropriate for agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration that have direct control over program results. "For functions where the government agency is responsible for achieving results, it makes sense," Nathan said. In some agencies, however, second parties such as states or grantees are responsible for the results, making it difficult to tie federal compensation to performance. The Senate version of the Transportation spending bill does not cut bonuses for FAA and NHTSA executives. The bonus cuts will soon face scrutiny in conference committee, where senators and representatives will work out differences between the two versions of the bill. "Observers have been asking what it will take for managers to take GPRA seriously," Kettl said. "This will surely do the trick." House Spares IRS Bonuses Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, tried to cut bonuses for executives at the Internal Revenue Service by offering an amendment to the 2002 Treasury appropriations bill on the floor of the House last week. The top 10 executives at the IRS, including the commissioner, would have been denied bonuses next year under Traficant's amendment. "Every newspaper in America says Congress must be nuts allowing these IRS fat cats to reward themselves with bonuses while their constituents are getting screwed," Traficant told House members. Traficant said the IRS does not answer 50 percent of taxpayers' phone calls, and that 73 percent of taxpayers who reached the IRS got bad advice. But Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said bonuses are necessary to attract top executives to the agency. "This is not the time for us, in my view, to send the wrong signal to the people who I hope are the good guys, the people who have come in, new people at the top who are from the private sector whom we have attracted to the IRS by saying, 'We are not going to pay you as much as the private sector, but we will give you a decent salary so we can be somewhat competitive, and we will give you a chance,'" Portman said. The House voted down the Traficant amendment 401-24.