Three locality pay areas dropped for 2006

St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Orlando, Fla., will not be designated as separate locality pay areas in 2006, according to a report released by the Office of Personnel Management last week.

The decision was made by the president's pay agent-Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten and Acting Office of Personnel Management Director Dan Blair-on the basis of a recommendation from the Federal Salary Council. The council had made the same recommendation for 2005, and the pay agents had agreed to it. They requested, however, that the council revisit the issue for 2006.

The council again recommended that Kansas City, Orlando and St. Louis be dropped as separate locality pay areas because pay disparities for those locations are below that for the "Rest of the United States" locality pay area.

"We regretfully conclude that these three areas should be dropped, since the disparities have been close to or below that for the RUS locality pay area under both surveys for each of the last three years," the pay agent said in its report.

In 2004, the National Compensation Survey determined that the pay disparity for the RUS designation was more than 22 percent. The Occupational Compensation Survey Program determined that the RUS pay disparity was more than 28 percent. For Kansas City, the NCS disparity was less than 21 percent and the OCSP disparity was 27 percent. For Orlando, the NCS disparity was 17 percent and the OCSP gap was about 25 percent. For St. Louis, the NCS figure was 19.5 percent. The OCSP disparity for St. Louis was 29 percent, slightly higher than the RUS designation.

The report, however, did include good news for three other areas. The pay agents followed the FSC recommendation to add Phoenix, Buffalo, N.Y., and Raleigh, N.C., as separate pay areas.

"We also note that [the Bureau of Labor Statistics] canceled its existing survey of Raleigh as part of its budget reduction in 2004, and that we will have to use the same data on Raleigh, appropriately updated, next year," the report said. "BLS should endeavor to reinstate the Raleigh survey as soon as possible."