Thursday federal headlines – January 8, 2015

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.

• A former employee at Housing and Urban Development was sentenced for stealing more than $800,000 from the government. Brian Thompson worked in HUD’s Office of Loan Guarantee for Native American programs. He sold real estate properties on behalf of the agency. The Justice Department said Thompson diverted some of the sales proceeds to his own bank accounts. He tried to cover up the thefts by submitting settlement statements with false information. Thompson will serve 26 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He must also pay $800,000 in restitution to the federal government. (DoJ )
• The Postal Service broke an agency record for parcel deliveries. It delivered more than 28 million packages on Dec. 22. That’s the most packages delivered on a single day in the agency’s history. It also delivered 463 million pieces of mail that same day. The agency reported an 18 percent increase in deliveries during the holiday season, compared to the year before. It delivered a total of 524 million packages in December 2014. The Postal Service said it prepared ahead of the season by delivering packages seven days a week. The agency expects continued holiday volume in January, as many people return holiday gifts by mail. (USPS)
• Chuck Hagel might be secretary of Defense a month longer than he and President Barack Obama anticipated. That’s according to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Defense News reports McCain is thinking of scheduling confirmation hearings for Ashton Carter in time for a vote at the end of February. McCain wants time for his and other committees to question Hagel on the 2016 budget proposal. Typically, the White House releases budget plans in early February. Plus, Carter is recovering from back surgery and may not be able to attend hearings before then. In a session with reporters. McCain also said he plans detailed oversight of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program. (Defense News)
• A proposed rule from the Office of Personnel Management would automatically enroll some feds into a health care plan. The rule would apply to employees whose current plan is dropped or discontinued from the Federal Employee Health Benefits program. It would require agencies to automatically enroll employees in the cheapest plan if they don’t pick a new one in time. The goal is to make sure employees don’t have a gap in health coverage. The rule won’t affect feds who enroll or switch plans during Open Season. (Federal Register)
• A SpaceX mission to the International Space Station is now scheduled to launch early Saturday morning. NASA engineers aborted the first launch attempt Tuesday, after finding a mechanical problem with the spacecraft. The rocket will take off before 5 a.m. on Saturday from Cape Canaveral. It’s scheduled to arrive at the space station Monday. A 60-foot robotic arm on the station will capture the spacecraft once it arrives. If SpaceX can’t launch Saturday, the next chance will be Tuesday. The aircraft carries cargo for experiments on board the space station. (NASA)
• Background check contractor KeyPoint Government Solutions is in hot water with a powerful member of Congress. The company suffered a cybersecurity breach last year that potentially affected more than 48,000 federal employees. Rep. Elijah Cummings (R-Md.) asked the company for answers to 13 questions. The ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is giving the company three weeks to respond. Among other things, Cummings is demanding to see a log of all successful cyber intrusions to KeyPoint’s systems in the last four years. Keypoint offered credit monitoring to the affected employees. But the Office of Personnel Management said there’s no evidence the company lost sensitive data. (Federal News Radio )
• Thanks to an abundance of special hiring authorities, most federal jobs were filled without fair and open competition. That’s one finding of a new study by the Merit Systems Protection Board. It found that in 2012, only 37 percent of federal openings were filled competitively. For the rest, hiring managers used what the board called a proliferation of hiring authorities that restrict the size and composition of the applicant pool. In a survey, MSPB found managers often knew who they wanted to hire before even posting the job. Board chairman Susan Tsui Grundmann said the exceptions threaten the principle of fair and open competition. ( Federal News Radio )
• The Federal Aviation Administration was hit with a lawsuit from what might be called an Uber of the airways. A startup called Flytenow uses the Internet to connect would-be passengers with private plane pilots. Passengers can climb aboard if they help out with the cost of the flight. The FAA in August told Flytenow and companies like it to stop because they were operating as commercial carriers. The Wall Street Journal reports the company filed a brief this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. It said allowing passengers to share costs has always been legal. And it argued using the Internet is no different than posting the availability of a seat using a bulletin board. (The Wall Street Journal)

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