Federal Daily - June 18, 2008

Whistleblower Law Conference Coming June 23 to American University

Whistleblower advocacy groups are sponsoring a one-day legal conference on whistleblower rights, scheduled for June 23 at the American University Washington College of Law. The conference, entitled “The Emerging Era in Whistleblower Rights and the Public’s Right to Know,” is set to examine recent legislative advances in the rights of whistleblowers, and pending legislation that would “enhance transparency, accountability and employee free speech rights” for employees, said the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a national whistleblower protection organization. The conference will include an address by Colleen Rowley, the former FBI official who blew the whistle after that agency’s headquarters failed to act on a field agent’s urging to investigate one of the 9/11 terrorists in advance of the attacks, as well as a luncheon talk by computer security expert Babak Pasdar, whose warnings of secret government spying on cell phone users helped to derail a planned congressional grant of “retroactive disclosure immunity” to telecommunication companies, GAP said. The conference will be open to media and the general public, and is scheduled to take place between 9:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on the premises of event cosponsor AU Washington College of Law. To see more, go to: www.whistleblower.org/template/index.cfm.

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Bill Would Extend Fed Mileage Rate to Veterans

Lawmakers introduced on June 16 a bipartisan House bill that would—if it becomes law—extend the federal employee mileage reimbursement to veterans seeking health care at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities. The Veterans Travel Equity Act would increase the veterans mileage reimbursement rate to the federal rate—currently 50.5 cents per mile, said bill sponsors Reps. Mark Souder, R-Ind., and Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind. The bill also expands the pool of veterans eligible for mileage reimbursement, removing income and pension eligibility as well as disability rating requirements. Under current law, only veterans with service-connected disabilities rated 30 percent or more qualify. “This bill is a matter of fairness,” Souder said. “Federal bureaucrats shouldn’t receive a greater mileage reimbursement rate than the men and women in uniform who have served our nation so bravely.” Veterans have complained about the mileage rate in light of skyrocketing gas prices and the long distances they have to travel, especially in the Western states, to receive VA care. To see more, go to:
http://souder.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsCenter.Press
Releases&ContentRecord_id=935247d2-19b9-b4b1-120f-
4885726cfdbd&Region_id=&Issue_id.

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PEER Criticizes EPA Efforts to Re-Open Libraries

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) criticized an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan to re-open a series of environmental libraries, alleging the agency was never really serious about engaging employees about library use. Ordered by Congress to re-open the libraries, PEER also alleges that the agency is just as grudgingly allocating only minimal space and resources to that renewed effort, and meanwhile is dragging its feet on an outstanding unfair labor practices complaint concerning preemptory removal of libraries and services. The ambitious closure plan once called for eliminating 10 percent of EPA’s network of laboratories and research centers, which together currently employ about 2,000 scientists. The plan also would have given EPA regional administrators a freer hand to carry out personnel reductions targeted at higher-ranking (GS-12 to GS-15) scientists, analysts and managers, PEER said. The plan only began to come unraveled in December 2007, when Congress intervened and ordered EPA to re-open the shuttered libraries.  But only unsatisfactory results have followed, according to PEER, because lawmakers left it in EPA’s hands to plan the restoration of the libraries. “EPA has chosen to make its scientists far less capable of independently analyzing whatever industry submits,” PEER Associate Director Carol Goldberg said in a June 16 statement. “EPA apparently never had any intention of genuinely consulting with its employees, library experts or others who depend on the libraries.” To see more, go to: www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1065.

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