TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010
KLMNO
EZ SU THE FEDERAL WORKER Grab a bike and go T Assessing health-care costs
he good news is that the price federal employees and retirees will pay for
their health insurance next year won’t go up as much as premiums did this year. The bad news is that the 7.2
percent increase for 2011 is much greater than inflation or any pay increase or cost of living adjustment they might get. The other news is that employee organizations say premiums in the Federal EmployeeHealth Benefits Program could be lower if the Office of PersonnelManagement would stop refusing a subsidy. “FEHBP premiums could have
GERALD MARTINEAU/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
RoyKeinitz, left, of theU.S. Department of Transportation, GabeKlein of theD.C. Department of Transportation,Martha Johnson of the General Services Administration and Office of PersonnelManagement Director John Berry show off some of the wheels available to workers who participate in the Capital Bikeshare program. To see video of the event, go to
voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye.
Treatment set for bedbugs at USAIDoffice
BY ED O'KEEFE Two areas of the Ronald Rea-
gan Building and International Trade Center infiltrated by bed- bugs will be treated by pest con- trol experts Tuesday, five days after the critters were found, offi- cials said. Juvenile bedbugs were found
Thursday in an office tower occu- pied by the U.S. Agency for Inter- national Development and a nearby closet, the agency said. Pest control experts inspected the affected areasFridayandplanned to treat them with an aerosol, steam and liquid mixture. USAID scheduled the treat-
ment for Tuesday after clearing workers and furniture from the area and ensuring that the bugs had not spread, a spokeswoman said. Workers will be able to reoccupy the affected offices four hours after they are treated, and pest control experts will reinspect the area with specially trained dogs in three weeks,USAID said. Employees learned of the bed-
bugs and treatment plan in an e-mail Thursday. The Reagan building is in downtown Washington and is one of the largest federal installa- tions in the country. It also houses offices of the Environmental Pro- tection Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Those of- fices are bedbug-free, agency rep- resentatives said. Bedbugs are bloodsucking in-
sects that can cause allergic reac- tions and infections.
ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.com
The Federal Page
l The pain to come: Pentagon’s plan to eliminate JFCOM is just a preview of the budget-cutting pain on the horizon. A13 l Who’s doing the spending: An updated look at the organizations pouring the most money into campaigns ahead of the November midterm elections. A13 l Making it local: A U.S. proposal to reform the Iraqi civil service says decentralizing the system would bring the best results. A13
WASHINGTONPOST.COM Q. How concerned are you that
health insurance costs are rising for federal workers?What’s your plan for dealing with the 7.2 percent increase? Does it offer any comfort that the increase is lower than what many private-sector workers will face?
Please e-mail your answer to
federalworker@washpost.com and include your full name, home town and the agency for which you work. We might include your response in Friday’sWashington Post.When answers are particularly sensitive, we will consider a respondent’s request to withhold full identification.
Whistleblower case probed BY ANDREWBECKER When a high-ranking immigra-
tionofficial inFlorida learned last year that a local sub-office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser- vices had reportedly mishandled hundreds of sensitive naturaliza- tion and citizenship certificates, she was concerned. But afterMa- ria Aran, the chief of staff for the agency’s Miami district, decided theagencywasn’tdoingenoughto address theproblem, she sounded the alarm. She blew the whistle — a little
toohard. Insteadof sendingonee-mail to
the agency’sOffice of Security and Integrity, Aran mistakenly sent her complaint to 300 agents na- tionwide. The Office of Special Counsel,
the federal agency that shields governmentwhistleblowers, is in- vestigating Aran’s assertion that her supervisors retaliated, re- voked her responsibilities and threatened to fire her if she didn’t take aninvoluntary jobtransfer to another Florida office. An inde- pendent administrative appeals agency last month ordered a 45- day stay of the reassignment, pending the completion of the SpecialCounsel’s investigation. The stay, which began Sept. 7,
was granted by theMerit Systems Protection Board, which also or- deredUSCIS to returnAranto her dutiesaschiefof staff.TheDepart- ment ofHomeland Security agen- cy administers immigration and naturalizationdocuments. “There are reasonable grounds
to believe that the agency decided to reassign Ms. Aran because of her protected disclosures,” board chair Susan Tsui Grundmann wrote inher stay order. But while USCIS officials con-
cedethat thereweresecurityprob- lems and other issues related to the documents, they deny any re- taliation against Aran, and say, in fact, the agency — and Aran — knew of the problemsmonths be- foreherdisclosure. Aran’s attorney acknowledged
that personality conflicts not re- lated to the documents may have existed between Aran and her su-
pervisor, but questionedthe agen- cy’s decision to transferAran long after those initial tensions arose. The watchdog agency’s investi-
gation is nearly complete, accord- ing to itsAug. 30 stay request.The Special Counsel’s office declined to comment further. “There is reasonable basis to
believe that Aran’s allegations may have also evidenced a danger to public health and safety due to the serious national security im- plications inherent in losing or mishandlinghundreds ofnatural- ization certificates including blank certificates,” Special Coun- sel attorneyAnneGullickwrote in the stay. Aran,whothroughherattorney
declined to be interviewed, re- ported to the agency’s internal af- fairs office inJune 2009 thatmore than 600 naturalization and citi- zenship certificates were routine- lyleftunsecured,unaccountedfor, or issuedwithout therecord-keep- ing necessary to counter fraudu- lent use, according to government records. “If someone is involved in ne-
farious activities, and they get a bunch of naturalization certifi- cates, they can give anyone the ticket to walk around the country unfettered,”Aran’s attorney, Dan- ielN.Vara Jr., said. USCIS launched an internal in-
vestigationafterAran’sdisclosure. The probe found last November that the district’s Oakland Park sub-office had “numerous prob- lem areas and lapses in the han- dling of certificates,” according to the stay request. USCIS spokesman Bill Wright
saidtheallegationthatnaturaliza- tion certificates were lost is false andnational securitywasnever at risk. “Improvementswere needed intheoffice’s record-keepingprac- tices to accurately account for all naturalization certificates. Those improvements were instituted,” Wright saidina statement. He also denied the allegations
thatAranwasawhistleblowerand that she faced retaliation.He said theagencyknewabout theissuein February 2009 and had begun to address the problems before Aran’sdisclosure.The agency con- ducted an earlier review in April
FEDERAL FACES
Paul T. Peek Director, Washington Passport Agency, Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S.Department of State Best known for: Ensuring that
the tens of thousands of people who apply for pass- ports at the State De- partment’s downtown Washington office can navigate the process; his office also guards against fraud. Government ser-
vice: Worked 18 years inpassport services for theBureauofConsular Affairs, including 12 years at the Seattle Passport Agency. He was division chief for technical opera- tions in the District office before becoming itsdirector. Biggest challenge:Onanyday,
Peek can be greeted by travelers withanoverseas flighthoursaway and expired passports, or hear
from naturalized citizens whose children were born in refugee camps. “We say, ‘Tellme your sto- ry,’ and we try to ferret out all the details and point people in the rightdirection,”Peek said. Quote: “No one grows
up dreaming to work in the passport office. But people want meaningful work. There are a lot of government services that are abstract, but at the passport office, we’re ac- tually giving people a product that they are coming to us for. We are
there to serve the traveling pub- lic.”
—FromthePartnership forPublic Service
Formore on Peek, go to
washingtonpost.com/fedpage. Send your nominations for Federal Faces to
fedfaces@washpost.com.
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2009, according to agency offi- cials. Aran, however, feared her su-
pervisors weren’t adequately ad- dressing the problems, Vara said, so she senther e-mail. USCIS district director Linda
Swacina confronted Aran about the e-mail, according to the Spe- cial Counsel’s stay request. Later, the then-acting Southeast region- al director for USCIS, Rosemary Melville, reassigned Aran to a po- sition that had other qualified ap- plicants. Aran had 10 days to ac- cept the assignment, or facepossi-
“Aran’s
allegations may have also evidenced a danger to public health.”
—Anne Gullick, Special Counsel attorney
ble termination, records show. “While Swacina and Melville
have indicated in investigative in- terviews that Aran is being reas- signed for performance-related reasons, they were unable to pro- videanydocumentaryproof,”Gul- lick, the Special Counsel attorney, wrote inthe stay request. Theproposedmovehadnorela-
tion to the record-keeping issues or Aran’s complaint, Wright said. The transferwould have put Aran inchargeofanother fieldoffice,he said. Swacina acknowledged in the
management response to the in- ternal investigation that the Oak- land Park field office, which was established in December 2008, didnothavenecessaryprocedures tomanage its workload, resulting in“multiple vulnerabilities.” The agency is instituting na-
tional standards for handling of the sensitive documents, a USCIS official said.
AndrewBecker is a reporter for the Center for InvestigativeReporting.
been lowered if it were not for the Administration’s decision to decline a payment available to other public and private employers who provide drug coverage as generous as Medicare’s,”National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association PresidentMargaret L. Baptiste said in a news release Friday. “Once again, this year, the Administration left $1 billion on the table—a subsidy available to and accessed by private employers in the marketplace, which could be used to lower worker and annuitant premium costs.” The subsidy was created in
2003 to encourage employers— includingUncle Sam—to keep their retiree prescription drug coverage even though a new Medicare prescription program had been created. Sounds good at first blush, but
federal organizations should be careful what they ask for. Given the current climate in
which Republicans are pushing for caps on federal employment and pay, drawing attention to a strong compensation package by saying it should be further subsidized could backfire. That may be one reason other employee organizations are not making a big issue out of the subsidy. The Bush and Obama
administrations have rejected past calls forOPMto accept the money. In response to several organizations that askedOPM Director John Berry about the subsidy last year, he wrote that federal employees could do without the subsidy “because there is no plan to eliminate drug coverage for Federal retirees.” Furthermore, he wrote, “applying for the subsidy is administratively costly and burdensome, lowering the net return for applicant organizations by approximately 20%.” ButNARFE points to a 2006
Government Accountability Office study that said the subsidy could lower premiums. “Officials from two large plans
with higher-than-average shares of retirees stated that the subsidy would have lowered their plans’ premium growth—officials from one plan claimed by at least 3.5 to 4 percentage points for their plan,” GAOreported. “We estimated that the subsidy would have lowered the growth in premiums across all FEHBP plans for 2006 by more than 2 percentage points on average, from 6.4 percent to about 4 percent.” In the context of health
insurance prices leaping faster and higher than other products and a health insurance system that still can’t control costs, federal employees get a relatively good deal even without the subsidy. “The rates are actually much
lower than our counterparts in the private sector,” Berry toldmy colleague Ed O’Keefe onMonday.
FEDERAL DIARY Joe Davidson
“You also have to factor in that we’re providing three [new] benefits this year, so we’re increasing the benefits while our rate increase is lower than it is in the private sector.”OPMexpects premiums for private-sector plans to rise between 8.9 percent and 10.5 percent. FEHBP for the first time will
cover the children of enrollees up to age 26, and fully cover the costs of preventive care services and tobacco cessation classes. “Look, I wish there were no
increase—so does everybody— but the fact of the matter is health-care costs are still going up around the country,” Berry said. “The fact that they’re going up less is a good sign for our employees, and I think it’s a testament to the quality of the staff we have at the Office of PersonnelManagement who negotiate those rates with the private sector. They did a great
Health insurance premiums rising Premiums for federal workers have increased gradually since 2009, aſter a steady decline from 2002 to 2007.
12 15%
0 3 6 9
Premium percentage increase 12.7%
7.3%
B3
2003
2007
2011*
SOURCE: Office of Personnel Management *Estimated NOTE: Chart reflects total increase in premiums.
THE WASHINGTON POST
job, and I’mextremely proud of them.”
Manager of the year The FederalManagers
Association named CarolynD. Bohlen as the winner of the organization’sManager of the Year award. Bohlen is acting director of
the Office of Civil Rights for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5. She has been with the EPA since 1987. In announcing the award, the
association said Bohlen “has enhanced the opportunities for staff and managerial training, skills development, career advancement, and diversity for the betterment of the organization through her outstanding achievement in redesigning and rewriting the Region 5Mentoring Program, its application form, and the Region 5MentoringManual. . . . This effort went well beyond the responsibilities of her immediate position.” Added association President
Patricia Niehaus: “Carolyn exudes the mission ofFMA, advocating excellence in public service, through her work at EPA. She took the initiative to resuscitate the agency’s mentorship program, having learned the benefits a strong mentorship program can provide to rising employees. Combined with her selfless charity work and desire to give back to her community, Carolyn is an example to us all.”
federaldiary@washpost.com
Staff writers Ed O’Keefe and Eric Yoder contributed to this report.
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