FederalDaily.com > House Committee Passes Whistleblower Protection Reforms

FederalDaily - October 3, 2005

House Committee Passes Whistleblower Protection Reforms

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., announced last week that his committee approved legislation to strengthen protections for government whistleblowers. The bills are: H.R. 923, “Mailing Support to Troops Act of 2005;” and H.R. 1317, “Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act.” H.R. 1317 says a protected disclosure by a federal employee includes any lawful disclosure an employee or applicant reasonably believes is credible evidence of waste, abuse or gross mismanagement, without restriction as to time, place, form, motive, context or prior disclosure. An amendment to the bill would give jury trials to federal whistleblowers if the Office of Special Counsel does not take corrective action within 180 days on their retaliation complaints. Another amendment would add TSA baggage screeners to the list of covered employees. Organizations supporting the bill include the Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight.

Pension Offset Reform Proposed—Again

Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, last week introduced the Government Pension Offset Reform Act, which addresses the rules that prevent seniors who worked in public service from receiving Social Security benefits during retirement. Voinovich said the new legislation “will ensure that low-income government retirees and their spouses will receive the full amount of both their Social Security and government pension benefits. Under current law, a Social Security spousal benefit is reduced or completely eliminated if the surviving spouse receives a pension based on a local, state, or federal government job that was not covered by Social Security. The Government Pension Offset Reform Act would change that. The senators said nearly 350,000 Americans are affected by the current offset rules. "Every year, support for this bill grows," said Mikulski.

House Votes to Keep Increased Life Insurance

The House passed legislation on Sept. 28 that will allow for the maximum coverage for Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI) and Veterans’ Group Life Insurance to be permanently increased to $400,000. The Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance Enhancement Act of 2005, H.R. 3200, makes permanent a temporary $400,000 ceiling that was enacted earlier this year in the war supplemental appropriations act—it was set to expire on Sept. 20, 2005. The bill also boosts the incremental increases in both levels of coverage for both these life insurance programs from the current $10,000 to $50,000. Further, it requires the Pentagon to notify the servicemember’s spouse in writing if the servicemember declines SGLI coverage or chooses an amount less than the maximum. The military also must notify a spouse should someone other than the spouse or child be designated as the policyholder’s beneficiary.

Progress Slow with Defense Travel System

The Department of Defense (DoD) has been working on a standard travel system—the the Defense Travel System (DTS)—for the last 10 years. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported last week that DTS development and implementation have been problematic. For example, GAO found that DoD did not have reasonable assurance that DTS properly displays flight and airfare information. Therefore, DoD travelers might not have received accurate information, which could have resulted in higher travel costs. There are also problems related to improper premium class travel, unused tickets that are not refunded, and accuracy of travelers’ claims. One of the challenges hindering DoD from using DTS as its standard, GAO said, is that DoD continues to use the existing legacy travel systems, which results in underutilization of DTS. There are additional costs from operating two systems with the same function—the legacy system and DTS—and from paying higher processing fees for manual travel vouchers as opposed to processing the travel vouchers electronically through DTS.