Federal Drive

Thursday Morning Federal Newscast – April 21st

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. T...

Federal News Network Staff

April 21, 2011 8:53 am

3 min read

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

It appears the Pentagon used faulty data to defend some local BRAC decisions. The Washington Post reports the report by the Defense Department Inspector General finds the move of 6,400 defense workers to the massive Mark Center office complex in Alexandria, Virginia didn’t adequately address existing and projected peak hour volumes. The Army then concluded the move would have no significant impact on traffic. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) says he has forwarded the report to officials in Alexandria and Fairfax County, encouraging them to sue the Pentagon and stop the move.
Transportation Security Administration will have to vote one more time to select a union. Yesterday’s vote count failed to produce a majority of the 19,575 votes cast. That’s because of the large number of workers who voted to have no union representation. The American Federation of Government Employees received about 8,400 votes, and the National Treasury Employees Union about 8,100. But more than 3,000 airport screeners voted to have no union. A runoff election without the no-union selection will take place in the next few weeks. The Unions meet today with the Federal Labor Relations Authority to work out details.
The Office of Personnel Management launches a new tool to help hiring managers judge candidates. It’s called Assess, designed to replace lengthy knowledge, skills and abilities statements traditionally completed by government job applicants. Angela Bailey, OPM’s deputy associate director, tells GovExec Assess is operating in a test phase. OPM hopes it will streamline the federal hiring process. The tool is useful for 12 types of jobs commonly found across government.
OPM says it will increase the pension dollars recent retirees receive during the lag time until their full pensions are figured out. Federal Times reports OPM will use initial estimates provided by retirees’ home agencies. It currently takes months to process pensions for new retirees, and in the meantime, some receive interim payments amounting to half of what they are owed, or less.
The government is retiring its color-coded terror alert system. Instead, there will be just two levels of warnings: elevated and imminent. And, those will only be relayed to the public under certain circumstances, sometimes via Facebook and Twitter. The plan states that before an official alert is issued, there is a multi-step process, starting with intelligence sharing among the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and the White House. If the threat is considered serious enough, a Homeland Security official will call for a meeting of a special counterterrorism advisory board, which will decide whether to issue an alert. The new system will be in place next week.
Pledges to the Combined Federal Campaign fell last year, the first annual decline since 2002. The Office of Personnel Management says the CFC in 2010 raised $281.5 million in pledges nationwide. That’s down by less and a half percentage point from 2009 levels. The National Capital Region raised $67 million, a half million more than last year. Each year the CFC raises charity money from federal, military and Postal Service employees. 2011 is the CFC’s fiftieth anniversary year.