Tuesday federal headlines – September 2, 2014

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com reade...

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows each day. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors.

  • Most Thrift Savings Plan funds went up in August. The I fund fell slightly over the past month. The S fund had the highest increase. It was up almost 5 percent in the past month and more than 22 percent over the past year. (Federal News Radio)
  • The Office of Personnel Management is looking for volunteers to join its two, governmentwide social-media working groups. The first group is building a governmentwide digital recognition program. It wants to find new ways to use social media to recognize government employees. The second group is crowdsourcing ideas to recruit and hire new federal employees. (DigitalGov)
  • President Barack Obama called for a 1 percent pay raise for federal employees. He told Congress, the 1 percent employees received this year doesn’t keep up with private sector increases. Obama also called for locality pay differentials to stay unchanged in 2015. Unless blocked by Congress, the raise would take effect Jan. 1. The proposal, made as the Labor Day weekend began, drew praise from Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chairwoman of the appropriations committee. (Federal News Radio)
  • One more Silicon Valley executive is said to be heading to Washington. Bloomberg reports Google’s Megan Smith is a leading candidate to replace Todd Park as the White House chief technology officer. Smith is a vice president at Google’s X Lab. Before joining the company in 2003, she was CEO of Planet Out, a website for gay Internet users. Park is returning to California this month. He’ll stay with the administration as a West Coast talent recruiter. (Bloomberg Government)
  • Richard Thissen was elected the new national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. Delegates chose him at NARFE’s annual convention in Orlando. Thissen has been a NARFE member since 1995. For 27 years, he was a civilian employee of the Army. He lives in Lake Ozark, Missouri. Thissen succeeds Joseph Beaudoin and will serve for two years. (Federal News Radio)
  • Fewer people filed discrimination complaints against the government in 2012 than the year before. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that in the latest year for which it has full numbers, 15,000 people filed a complaint. That’s nearly 7 percent fewer than in 2011. The EEOC completed three-quarters of its investigations on time, a slight increase. Among cabinet level agencies, the Labor Department had the highest complaint rate. Among mid-sized agencies, the EEOC itself had among the top three complaint levels. (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
  • It took 60 contractors to build the federal healthcare exchange, including HealthCare.gov. The Centers for Medicaire and Medicaid Services obligated $800 million under those contracts. And contractors are still running most of the exchange operations. Those are among the findings in the first of a series of Health and Human Services inspector general reports on the exchange. It came on the eve of the second open enrollment. Officials hope this year’s sign-up period avoids the fiasco of last year’s introduction. (HHS Inspector General)
  • A 6-year-old standard for how much smog is acceptable needs to be stricter. That’s the assessment of Environmental Protection Agency staff in a new report. The standard that’s been in place allows up to 75 parts of ozone per billion parts of air. The nearly 600-page report by the EPA recommends between 60 and 70 parts per billion. Doing so would save a significant number of lives and cut hospital visits, the agency said. But it could carry a hefty price tag. When the EPA tried to make a similar rule change a few years ago, it estimated it would cost up to $90 billion a year, making it one of the most expensive environmental regulations ever proposed. (Environmental Protection Agency)
  • The Navy is beginning work on the next generation of ship-board lighting. That means the beginning of the end of ubiquitous fluorescent lights. Defense News reports, the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are doing the research. They’re working with a private company to develop light-emitting diode technology suitable for the Navy. LED lighting uses less electricity than fluorescent and removes ballasts that produce annoying hum and flicker. A lot is at stake. A single Navy cruiser contains 6,000 fluorescent tubes. But LED bulbs can cost up to 25 times more than the fluorescent bulbs they replace. (Defense News)
  • New Balance wants to make the shoe for military recruits. Army Times reports that the company has unveiled a sneaker prototype that could become standard-issue in boot camps. If that happened, it could eliminate altogether the cash allowance system that lets recruits buy foreign-made shoes as long as they stay below an $80 one-time allowance. New Balance’s shoe would be all-American made. Details about the specialized sneaker first surfaced when a group of lawmakers visited a Massachusetts New Balance factory in August. Later this month, the Pentagon will host an industry briefing with a host of U.S. shoemakers to ultimately decide who will get the lucrative military contract. (Army Times)

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