Retroactive civil service pay raise still in limbo

A month has passed since President Bush signed the fiscal 2003 omnibus spending bill into law, but federal employees are still waiting for a retroactive pay raise included in the bill. "We've gotten no good answer, no deadline, nothing," said Stacey Farnen, spokeswoman for House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Hoyer has pressed the administration to issue an executive order that would detail how the raise will be divvied up so that employees can start pocketing the extra money. President Bush signed the final version of the omnibus bill on Feb. 20. The legislation included a 4.1 percent pay raise for federal employees, retroactive to the first pay period of 2003. The civil service pay raise approved last fall by the Bush administration was capped at 3.1 percent across-the-board and included no locality-based pay increase. A council made up of officials at the Office of Management and Budget, the Labor Department and the Office of Personnel Management must decide whether the additional 1 percent granted by the omnibus legislation will be added to the across-the-board portion of the pay raise or be given to federal workers for locality pay. The council then sends its recommendation to President Bush, who will issue an executive order declaring how the raise will be allocated. On Thursday, officials at OMB said they had no information about when the executive order would be issued or if a decision had been made regarding how the additional pay would be allocated. The White House press office did not respond to an inquiry about the executive order Thursday. Hoyer was unable to question OMB Director Mitch Daniels about the delay during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies hearing on Wednesday, but earlier in the week he questioned the delay. "The Bush administration's delay in issuing this order is not good for the morale of our 1.8 million federal employees at a time when we need them to be focused on the job at hand," Hoyer said in a Monday press release. "We have hundreds of thousands of federal employees affected by this delay who are directly involved in improving homeland security, and yet the administration still hasn't found the time over the past 25 days to provide the approved pay adjustment." According to Hoyer, most of the federal employees eligible for the 4.1 percent pay raise are approaching the sixth pay period of 2003. "This delay is a distraction that makes it difficult for employees to plan for their families and their future because they cannot be certain when they will receive the pay that they have been promised," Hoyer said.