Senator to introduce personnel reform bill

A coalition of business leaders, academics and good-government organizations are throwing their support behind human capital reform legislation that Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, plans to introduce Thursday. Voinovich, the ranking Republican on the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia, has long championed better human resources management in government. The lawmaker now has two bills pending in Congress that address personnel issues: the Federal Employee Management Reform Act (S. 1639) and the Federal Human Capital Act (S. 1603). S. 1639 would create agency chief human capital officers and S. 1603 would revise federal employee recruitment, relocation, and retention bonus provisions, expand criteria for providing employees with academic degree training and authorize agencies to pay for employee certifications. Voinovich told participants at a National Academy of Public Administration conference earlier this month that provisions from the two previous bills would be folded into the new legislation. Several Harvard University scholars, including former Indianapolis mayor and George W. Bush adviser Stephen Goldsmith and Steven Kelman, former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, voiced their support for the proposed legislation in a June 19 letter to Voinovich. They were joined in the letter by Senior Executives Association President Carol Bonosaro; CDW Computer Centers Inc. Vice President Arthur Friedsen; Syracuse University Professor Patricia Ingraham; Stanford University Professor Roderick Kramer; Council for Excellence in Government President Patricia McGinnis; University of Maryland School of Public Affairs Dean Susan Schwab; NAPA President Bob O'Neill; Bridgespan Group president Thomas Tierney and Monster.com Founder and CEO Jeff Taylor. The group of signatories described three components of the bill as particularly important: giving program officials more hiring authority, allowing agencies to offer employee buyouts in order to restructure their workforces, and raising the cap on student loan reimbursements agencies can provide. "We believe that prompt passage of this legislation would both enact a number of needed civil service reforms and also send a very powerful signal of encouragement to all those, in the executive branch and elsewhere, working on improving the ability of government agencies to deliver results," the letter said. "In light of the events of Sept. 11, we need every tool of good governance that can be made available, as quickly as possible, to improve our government's performance."