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President Bush is all about pay-for-performance. Even for corporate CEOs.

"I have not gotten into the detail of these plans." That's not exactly the phrase you want to hear about the Bush administration's new strategy for Iraq from the admiral who has been picked to implement it. But it's what the Washington Times reported Adm. William J. Fallon told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.

Remember the story of the Baghdad police barracks, built under a $75 million Army Corps of Engineers contract, in which the toilets leaked through the floors, permeating the building with sewage? Well, the Corps reports that its Gulf Region Division is making "steady
progress" on fixing the building. Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, the division's commander, says people should remember that "repairs are not unique to this project, or other projects in Iraq, or any project across the world."

Robert Stein, former comptroller and funding officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for steering contracts to a businessman in exchange for plane tickets, watches, alcohol, cigars and sexual favors, AP reports. He also has to pay a $3.6 million fine and serve three years' probation.

How many American troops have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan? Until recently, the Veterans Affairs Department said the number was 50,508. But then, the figure listed on the VA Web site suddenly plummeted to 21,649 after Defense Department officials intervened, the New York Times reports today. The difference between the two figures? One counts just combat injuries, the other also includes those resulting from accidents or illnesses in the war zones.

Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times takes a shot at determining just what the president has in mind with his proposal to create a "civilian reserve corps," and doesn't come up with much in the way of fresh details. So, Dinan reports, it's still not clear whether this is "a solid idea whose time has come or yet another throwaway applause line in a State of the Union speech."

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin got off with a warning for comments he made in a speech urging an audience to support former Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas. The Office of Special Counsel, in a letter to Griffin, said he should have provided a "better example" of compliance with the Hatch Act, the Houston Chronicle reports.

In the speech last March, Griffin said: "The space program has had no better friends in its entire existence than Tom DeLay. He's still with us, and we need to keep him there. There just are no better people."

Those remarks "really walked up against that line" in the Hatch Act that prohibits federal officials from using their position to influence elections, OSC chief Scott Bloch said. OSC's letter to Griffin was "sternly worded," he added.

Government-watchers will get a boost this year from an Office of Management and Budget directive that requires agencies to post the documentation behind their budget requests online. A paragraph in OMB’s annual guidance on budget preparation, Circular A-11, requires that within two weeks of their transmittal to Congress -- by Feb. 19 -- an agency’s full congressional budget justification materials must be posted on the Web. Labor Department CIO Pat Pizzella warned feds at this morning’s Government Performance Summit in Washington to expect that advocates and others with specific expertise will be going over the documents with a fine-toothed comb, and will quickly pick up on any mistakes. But OMB management chief Clay Johnson, who has previously welcomed bloggers’ ability to focus attention on federal issues, simply said of the change: “Transparency is good.”--Jenny Mandel

Before Challenger, before Columbia, there was Apollo 1. Forty years ago, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee gave their lives to the U.S. space program. Their deaths, AP reports, led NASA to put a new focus on safety for the remainder of the Apollo program.

Here's today's battlefield procurement fraud update: The Army's Criminal Investigation Division has opened up about 50 criminal investigations of potential contracting fraud in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, AP reports. These include the case of an Army officer accused of taking a $50,000 bribe to steer a contract for paper products and plastic flatware to a Kuwaiti company.

Civilian federal employees at the Defense Distribution Depot in Susquehanna, Pa., have won an A-76 competition to avoid having their work contracted out to the private sector. Of course, the Defense Logistics Agency announced, to win they had to do what employees often have to do in such competitions -- agree to cut and restructure the federal workforce. The functions up for competition included mail operations, waste services and maintenance of facilities, utilities, grounds and equipment.

I thought the Pentagon was having enough trouble keeping itself supplied with necessary equipment, but apparently it has some extra stuff to share. AP reports that the Defense Department gave away about 380,000 pieces of equipment in fiscal 2005 to 16,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. The items -- including helicopters, night-vision goggles and photocopy machines -- were worth a total of $124 million.

Check out the lead to this story from today's St. Petersburg Times:

Each day, administrative law judge Elving L. Torres decides whether people are disabled enough to receive Social Security benefits. Sometimes he puts himself in the shoes of people who appear before him: He parks his luxury import car in the handicapped spaces outside the building where he works.

According to the paper, Torres does have a handicapped parking placard on the dashboard of his silver Mercedes-Benz AMG coupe. But it was issued to an 86-year-old woman from Bradenton, Fla. Torres wouldn't speak to the paper, saying he wasn't allowed to talk to the media without permission. An SSA spokesman said the agency would look into the situation, adding, "if it's happening, it's got to stop."

So how did St. Pete Times reporter Bill Varian know about Torres' parking habits? It so happens that the SSA judge's office is in the same building that the newspaper occupies.

OPM Director Linda Springer has weighed in on the National Treasury Employees Union lawsuit challenging the Federal Career Intern Program, calling it "unfortunate."

"In light of the pending departure of hundreds of thousands of employees to retirement, the federal government needs every available tool to ensure we have an effective workforce, including the Federal Career Intern Program which brings in approximately 10,000 employees each year," Springer said.

Just in case you're the type to buy into the latest rumors, let's just knock this one down right away: The IRS is not moving to Costa Rica.

Donald Rumsfeld may be out as Secretary of Defense, but he hasn't left the government yet. The Washington Times reports today that Rumsfeld has been working out of a government-funded transition office in Arlington, Va., with seven staffers. The team is sorting through Rumsfeld's papers to figure out which ones he can take with him when he gets around to leaving Washington.

Oops, our mistake. That appears to be the latest message from the Social Security Administration inspector general's office about its effort to impose millions of dollars in fines on four Social Security Administration employees. According to the National Treasury Employees Union, which is representing three of the four workers in challenging the penalties, the IG's office has agreed not only to withdraw the proposed fines, but not to seek any other punishments, either. The employees were accused of using expert testimony improperly to help justify benefits decisions. But NTEU pointed out that they did so at the direction of an administrative law judge.

Between this news and Karen Rutzick's report yesterday that the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers had launched an effort to represent analysts at the Government Accountability Office, it's been quite a run for organized labor in the federal sector lately. Karen will explore labor's resurgence in more detail in the Feb. 1 issue of Government Executive.

Here's an example of how budget pressures are playing out on the front lines of federal agencies. Since fiscal 2004, the budget for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Regional Refuge System has been stuck at $28.5 million. But personnel expenses have been going up at about 5 percent per year, and the costs of fuel, equipment and other supplies also have increased. To deal with the situation, FWS's Midwest regional office reports, managers already have left 35 positions vacant and will cut another 36 jobs over the next three years. That's a total reduction of 20 percent of the region's workforce. "The cuts the Fish and Wildlife Service is being forced to make are damaging our nation's protected refuge system," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.

Does Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson have his eye on bigger and better things? His spokeswoman says he's "intrigued" by Colorado's 2008 Senate race, Rocky Mountain News columnist Peter Blake reports today. Nicholson does have some experience in Colorado politics, and was head of the Republican National Committee before joining the Bush administration. Of course, he'd have to give up his job running the largest non-defense bureaucracy to throw his hat into the ring. (Thanks to K.R. for the tip.)

• Watching the sycophantic members of Congress line the aisles for the opportunity to be seen shaking the president's hand just never gets old.
• Alberto Gonzalez apparently drew the short straw, and was designated to serve as the Cabinet official who skips the speech just to make sure someone is available to be president in the event of the unthinkable at the Capitol.
• Pretty classy gesture for President Bush to follow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "high privilege and distinct honor" introductory line with this: "I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own — as the first president to begin the State of the Union message with these words: 'Madam Speaker.' "
• Apparently, when the president said recently that we needed to find a way to get more civilians to go to Iraq, he wasn't referring to civilian federal employees, but private-sector folks. At least that's what it sounds like from his proposal for a "Civilian Reserve Corps." (By the way, Brian Williams noted on MSNBC after the speech that this particular proposal drew a decidedly tepid reaction from the audience.)
• As has become traditional in State of the Union addresses by both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent years, the speech was heavy with references to new federal policy initiatives and growth in the size of government (for example, doubling the size of the Border Patrol and boosting Army and Marine Corps forces), but at the same time, the president insisted that the key to the country's future lay "not with more government but with more enterprise," and pledged to "restrain the spending appetite of the federal government."

"National Pilots' Organization Reminds All Pilots: Avoid Washington, D.C. Airspace for State of the Union Address Tonight." All that hot air could cause disturbances in the atmosphere.

OK, people. It's time to get off the couch and start working on those New Year's resolutions. The Office of Personnel Management and the Health and Human Services Department are here to help with the 2007 HealthierFeds Physical Activity Challenge. From Jan. 22 to Feb. 5, feds can register as part of their organization at HealthierFeds.gov and begin logging their activities. The idea is to commit to 30 minutes a day, five days a week, doing any of 100 different activities, including: walking, running, bicycling, swimming, dancing, yoga, competitive sports, household tasks, gardening, working out on cardio machines, and weight training.

The bad news for Marcus Arroyo, former security chief at Newark International Airport, is that he was ousted from his position 10 months ago amidst security lapses at the facility. The good news (for him, at least), the Newark Star-Ledger reports, is that the Transportation Security Administration continued to pay him his salary of $156,752 a year until he filed retirement papers Jan. 3.

Travel to the moon, Mars and beyond will be "expensive, difficult and dangerous," concedes NASA Admininstrator Michael Griffin in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle. So why do it? Because it's "strategic." We have to be like the Pilgrims, Griffin says, giving ourselves the challenge of learning how to live in an unfamiliar environment. If we choose to stick with our own planet, we're giving up on greatness as a nation, he argues, because, "throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time." (Thanks to A.L. for the link.)

So what does the enoromous homeland security apparatus we've built since 9/11 spend much of its time and resources on every day? Dealing with hoaxes, USA Today reports.

I bet the folks at the Small Business Administration regret their decision in 2005 not to ask Congress for any money in fiscal 2006 to pay for the administrative costs of running the agency's disaster assistance program. Instead, the New York Times reports today, SBA officials figured they could get by on money left over from previous disasters. That worked for last year, but in this year's world of long-running continuing resolutions, the agency's about to run out of money to run the program.

There's something comical about the Transportation Security Administration apparently thinking that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, just might be married to the singer-songwriter who used to go by the name Cat Stevens.

Many heads of federal agencies are very worried about the effects of long-term continuing resolutions on their operations. But not Lurita Doan of the General Services Administration. She tells Federal Times that agencies' limited budgets may in fact drive them to seek out GSA's services:

You don’t want to be too gleeful about other’s misfortunes, but a continuing resolution can be a great news story for GSA because there is no other government agency whose core mission is procurement. And our whole reason for being is to provide timely delivery of goods and services to our government customers. I actually expect us to have an incredible year this year because of continuing resolutions.

Did President Bush have more on his mind than baseball when he welcomed the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals to the White House yesterday? A couple of quotes:

• "When you're on one of those losing streaks, it's easy to get down and to forget the goal."


• "I've made a career out of people underestimating me."

The Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity may have improperly awarded a $100 million contract for office space -- and may have overpaid by more than $2 million, USA Today reports. The contract was issued through the Interior Department, which insists the deal was kosher and has refused to stop paying the company. Investigators say Congress may have to sort it all out.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say apprehensions at the southern border are down 26 percent compared to last year. But they argue that's good news, and an indication the Border Patrol is now better equipped to prevent people from trying to cross the border in the first place. The Del Rio, Texas, and Yuma, Ariz., sectors both had declines of more than 60 percent in apprehensions.

In this week's Newsweek, Gen. Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff, talks about going to Iraq in 2003, just before leaving his post and just as the insurgency started in the country:

I went to Iraq in June, looked at it and I knew we were
in deep s---. I was going out the door. I felt
frustrated. Frustrated with the situation, frustrated with myself and everything else. And somewhat guilty because I knew how ill prepared the Army was to deal with it.

How many federal employees don't like free guaranteed money? The answer is 279,000, Mike Causey reports in his Washington Times column today. That's the number of people under the Federal Employees Retirement System who fail to put enough money in their Thrift Savings Plan accounts to get the automatic government match on their investments.

Mary Bomar, the recently appointed director of the National Park Service, may be a career federal employee, but she's pledging to be "much more business-savvy," AP reports. The agency, she says, will be looking to outside sources for matching funds for its plan to restore parks in connection with the agency's 100th anniversary in 2016.

IRS auditors are not happy with an agency policy that requires quickly closing out audits of large corporations, the New York Times reports today. The paper interviewed 50 auditors, and only one agreed with the new policy. The others said it lets companies get away with paying much less than they actually owe. Further, the auditors argue their hands are tied in doing anything about the practice by the agency's performance management system. Supervisors, they say, receive bonuses and promotions based on closing cases in the time allotted, not on the quality of audits or amounts collected.

One auditor, when asked why she didn't challenge the decision to close certain audits, said, "“Why would I do that? So my manager will give me a bad performance review?”

The IRS says the program is working, and that the proof is in the amount of additional tax recommended for each hour auditors spend on large and medium-size companies. That figure has more than doubled since 2002, from $2,394 to $5,195.

Here come the stories about the effects of long-term plans to limit agencies fiscal 2007 funding. From USA Today: "Budget Delays Force Hiring Freeze at Federal Crime Fighting Agencies." The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have implemented hiring freezes, the paper reports, and the FBI is only filling essential jobs.

There was a somewhat curious sentence in President Bush's speech yesterday on sending more troops to Iraq:

We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas, where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.

Here are two "ways" to "examine":

1. Tell civilians they have to go.










2. Tell their agencies they have to let them.

We had an interesting lunch in our offices today with Paul Anderson and Susan Becker of the public affairs shop at the Government Accountability Office. They noted that like executive branch agencies, GAO has been working through contingency plans for what to do if Congress enacts a measure essentially freezing its funding this year. And also like other agencies, among the possibilities GAO is considering is employee furloughs. Interestingly, congressional staffers have responded to this possibility by asking GAO officials what would happen if the House and Senate prohibited them from using furloughs to cut costs.

Yeesh. Not a good day for Postal Service news. AP reports that a Waukesha, Wis., mail carrier had a blood alcohol level of nearly four times the legal limit when he was arrested Friday after crashing his postal truck into a "No Parking" sign. Well, on the plus side, at least "intelligent mail" is on the way. The Postal Service says it will enable people to see where their mail is at every step of the delivery process -- even, presumably if that means the letters are sitting in a truck in front of the local tavern.

Looks like the bag was a little too heavy for two Colorado postal carriers. They've been charged with throwing away mail, CBS4 Denver reports. One of them, contract carrier Vickie Ann Walker, is accused of dumping 1,436 pieces, including 91 first class items. She says she was only trying to get rid of junk mail.

At least David Safavian got a golf trip to Scotland. Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, was sentenced Tuesday to two years probation and a fine of $1,000 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false financial statement. Stillwell's crime? Failing to report that superlobbyist Jack Abramoff gave him four tickets to a Washington Redskins game and two tickets to a Simon and Garfunkel concert.

Attention, D.C.-area hockey fans: The Washington Capitals and the Partnership for Public Service have teamed up to present Federal Employee Night at the Caps' game against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, Jan. 27. Feds get discounted tickets for the game, which will also feature 2006 recipients of the 2006 Service to America Medals.

"Federal Courthouse Has a Happy Ending to a Moldy Situation."

The 100,000 government contractors working in Iraq are earning an average of $98,387 a year, according to a survey of about 2,000 contractors done by ClearanceJobs.com. The next highest-paid locations were Maryland at $78,422, Virginia with $76,500, Pennsylvania at $76,451, Washington at $73,428 and New York at $69,444.

Contractors in Iraq have seen a 6.4 percent salary increase over the last six months, however, compared to a 10 percent decrease for domestic contractors with security clearances. ClearanceJobs.com points out that the $98,387 figure does not include signing bonuses, tax-exempt status, and additional danger pay.

About 650 contractors have been killed in Iraq since 2003.--Karen Rutzick

Tidbits from yesterday's Toledo Blade story on the cost to taxpayers of supporting former presidents:

• Ex-presidents’ personal allowances (including Secret Service protection) totaled $370 million from 1977 to 2000.


• Presidential pensions, which are are tied to salaries of Cabinet officers, will reach $188,000 per year in 2007.


• Before his death in late December, Gerald Ford spent more than any other former president on office supplies in 2006: $17,000.


• Bill Clinton's phone bill last year was $75,000 -- more than any of the other ex-presidents by $60,000.


• The federal government provides office space and staff to former presidents for as long as they live. Staff salaries are capped at $96,000 per year. The staffers are not official federal employees, but are eligible for federal health and retirement benefits.

Apparently, President Bush wants to send more than just additional troops to Iraq. He's looking for a bigger civilian commitment, too. See this excerpt from a piece Sunday in the New York Times previewing Bush's proposal:

The plan also calls for a more than doubling of the “Provincial Reconstruction Teams,” relatively small groups of State Department officials empowered to coordinate local reconstruction efforts, chiefly hiring Iraqi companies. For much of the first half of 2006, the State Department was engaged in a bureaucratic dispute with the Defense Department about how these teams would be protected, including exploration of a plan to hire private protective forces that a White House official said “was too expensive.” Now those teams will be expanded and embedded with combat brigades, officials said, in what would amount to the latest effort to demonstrate to Iraqis that the American forces in their midst were not simply occupiers.

Newsweek has a story this week detailing a draft report recently produced by Ginger Cruz, director of strategic communications in the American embassy in Baghdad. According to the article, the document:

so much as admits that despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the United States has lost the battle for Iraqi public opinion: "Insurgents, sectarian elements, and others are taking control of the message at the public level." Videos of U.S. soldiers being shot and blown up, and of the bloody work of sectarian death squads, are now pervasive. The images inspire new recruits and intimidate those who might stand against them. "Inadequate message control in Iraq," the draft warns, "is feeding the escalating cycle of violence."

In a telling move, the new Democratic majority has given the House Government Reform Committee a new name: the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Observers have indicated that they expect the committee’s new chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to focus more attention on oversight of the executive branch and the subtle name change seems to confirm that.

The panel was created in 1927 as the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments. In 1951 its name was changed to the Government Operations Committee to reflect a focus on overseeing agency operations. After the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, the Committee on the Post Office and the Civil Service and the Committee on the District of Columbia were combined with Government Operations to form the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Then, for the 106th Congress, the word “oversight” was taken off the panel’s name when it assumed the Government Reform Committee name. -- Daniel Pulliam

President Bush has found a nominee for the No. 2 post at the Office of Personnel Management. It's Howard Weizmann, who currently serves as president of the Private Sector Council, which is now part of the Partnership for Public Service. Prior to heading PSC, he was a senior vice president of human resources at Digex, Inc. Earlier in his career, he worked at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a human resources consulting firm. According to a Partnership bio of Weizmann, he also has co-written a book with his wife, Jane Weizmann, a senior compensation consultant, called Rewards and Business Strategy: People, Pay and Performance.

Say what you will about the performance of Linton Brooks as head of the National Security Administration, his firing -- and his acceptance of his fate as "based on the principle of accountability that should govern all public service" -- is very rare in the federal government. As I argued in a 2004 column, "when you're really accountable, you pay the price. And when you're a political appointee, who serves at the pleasure of the president and is never guaranteed job security, the price is your job."

It's amazing that more than 30 years after Watergate, we're still learning more about the depths of Richard Nixon's hatred for career federal employees. AP reports today that newly released documents show that Nixon had nothing but contempt for career State Department officers. Shortly after his reelection in 1972, Nixon questioned the loyalty of diplomats to his policies and told National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger that his legacy would be to "ruin the Foreign Service. I mean ruin it -- the old Foreign Service -- and to build a new one. I'm going to do it."

Here's one of those trend stories that's gotta make the Bush administration nervous: "It's Open Season on Government Watchdogs," blares the Newark Star-Ledger headline on an AP story about recent efforts to rein in inspectors general.

As the Gerald Ford funerals and remembrances wind down, here's a parting thought from Doug Bailey, an insider in Ford's 1976 presidential campaign, courtesy of our sister blog The Hotline On Call:

Some found him less than a scintillating intellect, even though he knew more about how government works (and the budget, for example) than any president before or since.

Choice tidbits from the Los Angeles Times interview with departing National Hurricane Center chief Max Mayfield, whose 34-year federal career ends today:

• On the inevitable next big hurricane: "We're eventually going to get a strong enough storm in a densely populated area to have a major disaster. I know people don't want to hear this, and I'm generally a very positive person, but we're setting ourselves up for this major disaster."


• On the federal role in disaster response: "You don't want the federal government to be your first responders. The government can't do everything for people and it shouldn't, or else you create a culture of dependence."


• On the possibility he might run for political office: "Oh, good gosh, no! That is just not my thing."

Congratulations, San Diego, Minneapolis-St. Paul, the District of Columbia, Columbus, Sioux Falls, and Laramie County, Wyo. The Homeland Security Department is set to report today that you are the only cities and counties that get high marks for emergency communications, according to AP. As for Chicago; Baton Rouge, La.; Cleveland; Mandan, N.D.; and American Samoa -- you've got some work to do.

You know that problem of all the baby boomers reaching retirement age at the same time that everybody's always talking about? Tobyhanna Army Depot is trying to do something about it, the Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal reports. The installation's "skills preservation program" includes partnerships with local community colleges. But the magazine also notes that many of the baby boomers who are supposed to be headed out the door aren't that eager to leave. "I have cold feet about eventual retirement," says Bob Cays, a 67-year-old information technology specialist. "I believe my job is helping me to maintain my health."

Dear Lionel Van Deerlin: Thanks for the tip of the hat to Government Executive in your recent column in the San Diego Union-Tribune. But what's up with describing us as an "obscure trade journal"? Where's the love?

The Federal Aviation Administration is dismissing the claim by some United Airlines employees that they saw what appeared to be a UFO hover over Chicago's O'Hare Airport on Nov. 7, then zoom off into the sky. It was just a "weather phenomenon," an FAA spokeswoman told the Chicago Tribune. One air traffic controller at the airport is taking the report even less seriously. "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," wisecracked O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych.

Did you know that before Gerald Ford served in Congress or the White House, he was a federal employee? It's true. (Thanks to Chris Dorobek over at FCW Insider for the link.)