GovernmentExecutive.com

Paid Parental Leave, which the administration publicly supported, clears the House 258-154.

On Monday, I reported that new OPM Director John Berry plans to put some teeth into his agency's proposals by marching lock-step with OMB Director Peter Orszag, who has considerably more leverage over how various departments and agencies allocate resources. (For example: Making increasing use of pots of money that an agency loses unless the funds are put against workforce training.)

With that in mind, OMB's issuance of a Statement of Administration Policy (link to PDF) in support of paid parental leave for federal employees has to be seen as some early evidence of Berry's ability to drive action in the EOP. Quoth OMB:

The Administration supports the goal of H.R. 626, which would provide Federal employees with access to paid leave upon the birth, adoption, or fostering of a child.

Being able to spend time at home with a new child is a critical part of building a strong family. The initial bonding between parents and their new child is essential to healthy child development and providing a firm foundation for the child's success in life.

Measures that support these relationships strengthen our families, our communities, and our nation. The Federal government should reflect its commitment to these core values by helping Federal employees to care for their families as well as serve the public. Providing paid parental leave has been successfully employed by a number of private-sector employers, and can help to make job opportunities accessible to more workers.

The Administration is currently reviewing existing Federal leave policies to determine the extent of their gaps and limitations. The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to refine the details of this legislation to make sure it meets the needs of Federal agencies and employees, as well as their families.

Ed O'Keefe rightly notes that the President's backing isn't entirely unexpected, and candidate Obama was fairly methodical in his outreach to federal employees. But it's not always the case that intentions and promises equate to action, and minor actions like this are a fairly reliable indication of whether certain issues are being successfully kept on a busy young Administration's radar screen.

The Office of Personnel Management announced late on Friday afternoon that they've awarded a 7-year contract to John Hancock Life and Health Insurance Company to provide long-term care insurance. Long Term Care Partners will still manage the program, so I wouldn't expect major changes, but we'll have more details later.

Read Megan McArdle on the terrifying state of public pension funds.

This week, the Washington, D.C. City Council passed a law saying that the District will recognize marriages between same-sex couples performed in other states. Mayor Adrian Fenty will have to sign the law, of course, and Congress and President Obama will also have to sign it. If the bill makes it to Congress, Ezra Klein points out that it will likely land in the lap, at least temporarily, of Rep. Stephen Lynch, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee.

Lynch, coincidentally, will also probably have some jurisdiction over the House version of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, once it's introduced by Rep. Tammy Baldwin. That's good news for proponents of the expansions of rights for gay and lesbian couples. As New England gay newspaper Bay Windows reported in 2003, Lynch started his career with a somewhat socially conservative reputation but since has won the admiration and respect of his gay constituents, and a 100 percent vote rating from the gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign. It also places a lot of responsibility in Lynch's hands: he could end up guiding the progress of two of the biggest gay rights issues to come up in the new Obama administration.

Continue reading "Gay Rights Convergence" »

I wrote last week that the Obama administration was considering changes to how Veterans Affairs bills for veterans' health care. At the time, the details of the proposed changes weren't clear. As it's been explained to me, this is how it would work: right now, for veterans who have health insurance in addition to the TRICARE insurance they pay for, the VA bills the other insurance before they bill TRICARE. The idea would be to switch wounded veterans to the same payment order. I'm still not sure why the Obama administration is considering this. But that appears to be what the change is.

Two California judges ruled that the domestic partners of gay and lesbian federal employees who work for them are entitled to health care benefits under FEHBP. This sets up a confrontation with the Office of Personnel Management, which as of a Feb. 20 letter, said that the office couldn't provide federal employees' partners with benefits because of the Defense of Marriage Act. More to come in a story later today, but this is big.

Everybody wants to get new federal employees automatically enrolled in the Thrift Savings Plan. First, it was new Federal Workforce Subcommittee Chair Stephen Lynch. Now, Henry Waxman's reintroduced his tobacco bill with a package of TSP reforms including automatic enrollment, attached. A similar piece of legislation passed the House last year.

This go-round, so similar to the endless debates over pay, illustrates the strengths and the weakness of Congressional control over much of the TSP. The legislative process means that change can't happen precipitously or recklessly--if the TSP decided it wanted to go big on credit default swaps, for example, the market as a whole would have moved on to something else by the time the TSP got authorized to buy into risky investments. But it also means that it takes forever to advance an idea, even when there's consensus on it. The Employee Thrift Advisory Council and the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board are signed up as saying automatic enrollment's a good thing. Leading lawmakers support it. And yet, we're still waiting for automatic enrollment because it's really hard to get lawmakers to pay attention to federal employee issues long enough to pass bills that affect them.

According to Marc Ambinder, that's what Obama's got in his budget.

For those of you who have been following, and commenting, on the Justice Department's fake scam email to employees, this is your lucky day. I interviewed the Chief Information Officer at Justice today about the hoax. We've got the full details here.