Appointee bonuses topped $1 million in 2002

Nearly $1.5 million in performance bonuses went to political appointees in 2002, according to the Office of Personnel Management, and one House Democratic leader is raising questions about the Bush administration's use of the bonuses at a time when the administration is seeking to hold down pay raises for rank-and-file federal employees.

An OPM report released Thursday by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., details the cash awards received by 470 political appointees last year. Hoyer, whose congressional district is heavily populated by federal employees, requested the report in December after the release of a memo by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card revealed that administration officials had reinstated the bonus program in March 2002.

The practice was banned in the early days of the Clinton administration after allegations that the first Bush administration used the cash awards to reward political cronies just before leaving office. But despite that prohibition, a September 2001 General Accounting Office report found that at least 50 political appointees received bonuses during the last days of the Clinton administration.

"While I have no opposition to awarding bonuses for outstanding performance, the White House's decision to change personnel policy without notifying Congress and then taking an extraordinarily long time to provide information on the results of that policy is troubling," Hoyer said in a statement. "I hope that the administration will be more conscious of their obligations to fairly reward all members of the federal workforce."

Hoyer and federal employee union leaders criticized the administration's fight to hold the civil service pay raise to 2.6 percent in 2003, citing the need for belt-tightening, while paying $1.44 million in bonuses to less than 500 appointees whose annual salaries averaged nearly $100,000 in 2002. The Education Department awarded $153,250 to 37 of its appointees.

"Clearly the better-off federal political appointees have benefited, once again, from President Bush," said John Irvine, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union.

According to National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley, the appointee bonus policy is likely to have a dampening effect on employee morale, given the gap in public-private sector salaries and the current administration's record of pushing larger raises for the military.

"There is a retention and recruitment crisis enveloping the federal government," Kelley said. "It is driven in large part by the public-private pay gap, and that inevitably will hurt services to taxpayers."

In its fiscal 2004 budget proposal, the Bush administration proposed a 2 percent average civil service pay raise paired with the creation of a $500 million fund managers could use to raise the salaries of some employees based on performance appraisal ratings. House legislators included the fund in their fiscal 2004 Defense authorization bill, which is headed to conference committee.

A White House spokesman said he was unable to respond to the OPM report because he had not reviewed it.