Panel: No change to locality pay areas in 2009

The Federal Salary Council has recommended maintaining the existing locality pay areas in 2009.

In an Oct. 14 letter to the President's Pay Agent and other officials, the council denied requests from 42 areas to be included in existing or new locality pay areas in 2009. Those areas -- which include Albany, N.Y.; Austin, Texas; Beaumont, Texas; Berkshire County, Mass., Las Vegas and New Orleans -- currently fall within the "rest of U.S." category and generally receive lower locality increases than large metropolitan areas. Currently there are 32 locality pay areas.

"None of these locations meets the current criteria to be included in an existing locality pay area and, at present there are no plans or funds to expand the number of locations surveyed by [the Bureau of Labor Statistics] as separate locality pay areas," the council said in the letter.

The salary council said it relies on BLS' national compensation survey to compare levels of work between federal and nonfederal jobs. But the bureau does not have adequate resources to conduct compensation surveys in places the council would like to review for potential establishment of locality pay areas, according to the letter.

"The need for new locality pay areas is a recurring theme we face each year," FSC said. "The council has struggled with how to address these cases in the absence of appropriate survey data from BLS."

The council noted that BLS is studying how to incorporate use of occupational employment statistics into the locality pay program. That data represents a much larger sample of nonfederal employers and covers more metropolitan areas than available under the compensation survey. The bureau plans to brief the salary council's working group later this year on its research and anticipates a more detailed report next spring, the letter stated.

In years past, the council has voted to shift some cities into or out of the rest of U.S. category. The last time that happened was in 2005, when it voted to designate Raleigh, N.C.; Buffalo, N.Y., and Phoenix as separate locality pay areas, and moved St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Orlando, Fla., into the "rest of U.S." category.

The council also formally recommended to the president that federal civilian employees receive an across-the-board pay increase of 2.9 percent in 2009. Employees will receive the rest of their annual pay hike in the form of locality pay.

"We recommend that funds allocated for locality pay raises be distributed so that locations with the largest pay gaps receive the largest increases and that employees in each locality pay area receive at least some portion of the locality pay funds," the council said.

An Office of Personnel Management spokesman said last week that details on salary increases for each of the 32 locality pay areas will not be available until the president signs an executive order allocating the overall increase between an across-the-board raise and locality pay.