Execs' association calls for pay reform, more career positions

The Senior Executives Association will push the new Congress to reform the civil service compensation system and the new president to fill more high-ranking positions with career civil servants instead of political appointees, SEA president Carol Bonosaro and general counsel William Bransford said at the organization's conference on Tuesday.

"The problem in our view is not only the loss of a lot of talent, experience and accomplishment from the government, but are the most talented GS-15s going to aspire to prepare themselves for and apply to the SES?" Bonosaro asked, citing pay caps as a major barrier to recruiting. "GS-14s and 15s are saying, 'Yes, the honor is nice, the importance of the job is nice, but I can add.' "

A 2006 SEA study showed that 47 percent of senior executives thought the new pay system would discourage applications for SES positions. A subsequent survey by the Office of Personnel Management found that 60 percent of senior executives were unfamiliar with their agency's executive compensation plan and 65 percent had not seen a summary of executive performance evaluations and performance awards. Bonosaro said those numbers were signs that OPM had not gone far enough to make executive compensation seem fair and transparent.

Bransford said SEA was working with Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Workforce Subcommittee, to convene a July hearing on executive compensation. At that hearing, Bransford said the association would call for guaranteed raises for executives who received ratings of "fully successful" or better, guaranteed first-year raises, and for performance awards to count toward retirement.

"Is the SES of the future going to be as good as the SES of the past?" Bransford asked. "I think we've got some significant warning signs. Right now, the risk-rewards ratio is out of balance."

Akaka and some House Democrats were supportive of these proposals, Bransford said, but Voinovich believed they were a matter for OPM regulation, not legislative change.

The recommendation SEA is preparing for the presidential campaign committees of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., will include a call to fill more high-level positions with career employees rather than political appointees.

Bonosaro cited the findings of the 2003 Volcker report from the National Commission on the Public Service as an indication that civil servants were given fewer top roles. The report said the number of presidential appointees grew from 286 under President Kennedy to 3,361 under President George W. Bush.

SEA will urge the next president to make chief financial officers and chief human capital officers career employees, Bransford said, as well as their deputies.

Another SEA priority will be to clarify the training and preparation candidates need to become senior executives. Bonosaro said she had heard about efforts to identify managers who needed special training because they worked in national security fields, but she did not have any details on what might be required of those managers.

"Over the years, there have been efforts to pare the SES down to the real generalists, the top-flight managers, and there's a notion that there are some people who are real technical managers and should be in a different corps," Bonosaro said. "At the same time, you're looking at national security professionals who are seen as needing a different kind of preparation."