Locality pay dreams

Every year, dozens of federal officials from outside the Beltway call, e-mail, write and fax the Office of Personnel Management, begging to be something more than merely "Rest of the United States." When it comes to federal pay, Rest of the U.S. is the lowest of the low. It's the 32nd of 32 locality pay areas. Huntsville, Ala., is on the locality pay map-it's one of 31 designated locality pay areas where federal employees get special pay increases each year based on the cost of labor in particular metropolitan areas. Even Dayton, Ohio has its own pay area. But federal employees in Springfield, Mass.; Key West, Fla.; San Antonio; Norfolk, Va.; and Washoe County, Nev., all get the same catch-all Rest of the U.S. pay increase-4.52 percent this year. Many of them aren't too happy about it. The government established the locality pay system under the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, in recognition of the fact that wages vary significantly across the country. In the private sector, workers in New York City doing the same jobs as workers in Milwaukee usually get paid at different rates. The comparability act brought at least some sense of that "market sensitivity," as it is known in human resources circles, to the federal government's pay scales. But ever since the locality rates took effect in 1994, federal officials in the Rest of the U.S. have tried to get special locality rates applied to them. Representatives of agencies with offices in such cities as Raleigh, N.C., and Louisville, Ky., have sought to have their own locality pay areas. In places on the outskirts of existing locality pay areas, officials have tried to get their workplaces covered by the neighboring locality rate. Federal employees in western Massachusetts, for example, want to be included in the Hartford, Conn., locality pay area. In Hartford, federal workers get paid about 5 percent more than workers in the Rest of the U.S. Officials in the Rest of the U.S. plead their cases each year before the Federal Salary Council, an Office of Personnel Management group that recommends changes in locality pay to the administration each year. In the past, the council has been cautious about recommending new locality pay areas or including more cities and counties in existing pay areas because of a concern that such changes would open the floodgates to petitioners from across the country. But Sam Wallace, the new head of the Federal Salary Council, said at the council's August meeting that he doesn't think the "floodgate effect" should be a concern. Instead, every application should be considered on its own merits, Wallace said. That change in philosophy was welcome news to Jeffrey Anliker, chairman of the Federal Executive Association of Western Massachusetts. Anliker and other federal managers from the Connecticut River Valley have petitioned the council repeatedly in recent years to be shifted into the Hartford pay area. Anliker and Bruce Sylvia, vice-chairman of the Western Massachusetts executive association, appeared again before the council this month. Anliker cited several cases of agencies having trouble recruiting and retaining employees because of the low Rest of the U.S. locality rate. One candidate for an Agriculture Department administrative officer position in Amherst, Mass., for example, turned down the job when the candidate realized Amherst isn't part of the Boston locality pay area. The application of the western Massachusetts group faces several obstacles, however. First, the council has said it won't apply special locality rates to areas with fewer than 2,000 federal employees paid under the General Schedule. Western Massachusetts has about 1,600 such employees. Second, communities are supposed to show economic and workforce ties with the core of the locality pay area that they want to be a part of. An old study questioned the tie of western Massachusetts to Hartford. Anliker and Sylvia asked the council at the August meeting to change the 2,000-employee criterion, given the federal downsizing of the 1990s. They also made the case that western Massachusetts and Hartford have strong economic links. Many workers commute between the two areas, they said. Wallace told the executives that the council would consider their case. One factor in the Massachusetts group's favor is its persistence. Only one other group, from Monroe County and Palm Beach, Fla., showed up at the August meeting to plead its case. Officials from other areas submitted only written applications. But if recent history is any guide, the salary council will recommend few if any changes to the borders of locality pay areas this year. And for another year, officials across the country will have to get by being just Rest of the U.S.