This post first appeared on Government Executive. Read the original article.
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The Office of Personnel Management has again tapped its flexibility to assist federal employees affected by natural disasters, allowing those impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires to receive paid leave donated by other federal personnel.
The agency issued its latest memo on the emergency leave transfer program on Jan. 15, marking the fourth time OPM has tapped the authority in the last five months, following hurricanes Beryl in July and Helene and Milton in October.
The memo, penned by then-acting OPM director Robert Shriver, allows other federal employees to donate unused annual leave to impacted employees by creating agency leave banks.
Through the agency leave banks, impacted employees “who are adversely affected by a major disaster or emergency, either directly or through adversely affected family members, and who need additional time off from work” can utilize donated leave without having to use their own.
The Jan. 15 applies to federal employees impacted in Los Angeles County beginning Jan. 7 and continuing through the current crisis. Employees seeking to become emergency leave recipients must apply in writing to their agencies or apply through a personal representative. Employees wishing to donate their leave should contact their own agencies and not OPM.
Some reports have tallied the multiple fires having burned more than 40,000 acres and killing at least 27 people.
OPM issues final rule on standardizing locality pay rates
As expected, OPM officials issued their final rule in the Federal Register Tuesday standardizing the maps used to determine locality pay rates between the General Schedule and the Federal Wage System.
The regulation seeks to address a pay inequity gap between the two systems, where the locality pay of the General Schedule is determined in part by the gap between private sector salaries of the regions the federal employees are in and basic federal pay, whereas the Federal Wage System relies on a government formula to determine the prevailing wage for private sector work in the region.
But because the General Schedule locality maps are updated annually and the Federal Wage System maps are based on post-World War II domestic military installations, pay inequity issues developed between the two pay systems within the FWS itself.
By standardizing the maps for both pay systems, by Oct. 1, an estimated 15,000 Federal Wage System employees will see their salaries increase.
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