FederalDaily - June 8, 2006

Committee Approves 2.7 Percent Raise for Feds

The House Appropriations Committee on June 6 approved the 2007 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill, which includes a 2.7 percent raise for civilian federal workers. The 2.7 percent raise for civilian federal workers would match the 2007 raise approved by the House for members of the military, continuing a tradition of parity in civilian-military pay increases. Earlier this year, the administration proposed a raise of 2.2 percent for both groups.

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Veterans File Lawsuit over Stolen Data

On June 6, several veteran organizations filed a joint lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) over the loss of veterans’ personal information. The organizations are: the National Gulf War Resource Center, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Radiated Veterans of America, Citizen Soldier and Veterans for Peace. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks:

• a declaratory judgment that the VA’s loss of these records violated and continues to violate both the Privacy and Administrative Procedure Acts;
• a court order that the VA disclose the exact nature of its compromised records system and individually inform each veteran of every record it maintains on him/her;
• an injunction preventing the VA from altering any data storage system and prohibiting any further use of these data until a court-appointed panel of experts determines how best to implement safeguards to prevent any further breaches; and
• a judgment awarding $1,000 to each veteran who can show that he/she has been harmed by the VA’s violation of the Privacy Act.

In related news, the VA announced on Tuesday that  personal information on as many as 1.1 million military members on active duty, 430,000 members of the National Guard, and 645,000 members of the Reserves may have been included in the data theft. 

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Committee Acts against IRS Contractors

Rep. Steven Rothman, D-N.J., introduced legislation that would prevent the IRS from hiring private debt collectors to pursue tax debts in the coming fiscal year. The legislation would prohibit any funds under the 2007 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill from being used for the program, according to the National Treasury Employees Union. Rothman’s legislation was added as an amendment to the 2007 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill, which the House Appropriations Committee approved on June 6.

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IRS Financial Management Improvements Needed

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says there are 72 ways the IRS could improve its financial management. The IRS annually collects more than $2 trillion in taxes, processes hundreds of millions of tax and information returns and enforces the nation’s tax laws, GAO said. However, since 1992, GAO has identified a number of weaknesses in the IRS’ financial management operations. GAO said the IRS has made significant progress, as evidenced by six consecutive years of clean audit opinions on its financial statements and the closing of more than 200 financial management recommendations. But GAO found that the IRS still faces challenges. At the beginning of GAO’s audit of the IRS’ fiscal year 2005 financial statements, 84 financial management-related recommendations from prior audits remained open. During the fiscal year 2005 financial audit, IRS took actions that enabled GAO to close 34 of those recommendations. At the same time, GAO identified additional internal control deficiencies resulting in 22 new recommendations. In total, 72 recommendations currently remain open. For the full report, go to www.gao.gov/new.items/d06560.pdf.

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