Thursday September 13, 2001
Should government Workers Keep Frequent Flier Miles?
A bill that would allow federal employees to keep frequent flier miles earned on official travel for personal use is flying through Congress. The House has quietly passed H.R. 2456, which Reps. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Connie Morella, R-Md., Introduced in early July.
In most cases, federal employees are not allowed to keep for personal use any frequent flier miles earned during trips taken for official government business. But a movement to repeal that rule has gained momentum recently.
In May, the General Accounting Office put its weight behind overturning the ban, saying that enabling employees to keep their miles would help agencies compete with the private sector for talent.(See letter here) Under H.R. 2456, federal workers could keep their miles as long as the frequent flier programs used were obtained under the same terms as provided to the general public and cost the government no extra money.
Other frequent traveler benefit programs, such as hotel point programs and car rental point programs, would also be covered under the bill. The legislation would be retroactive, allowing federal employees to keep and use miles earned prior to the bill’s enactment.
-See Washington Post story
Under current law, government workers must turn back the frequent-flier miles they earn while conducting official business so that these miles can defray the cost of future government trips. Some agencies, such as the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Justice Department, have programs that give cash awards to employees who help save the government money.
According to a recent Government Accounting Office study, the GSA saved $823,000 on travel costs between January 1995 and September 2000 through the use of frequent-flier miles and distributed roughly half that money to employees. The Justice Department saved more than $200,000 between October 1996 and 1997, half of which went to its workers. Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, said such savings should remain in the federal government’s coffers.
-Does your state and local government have a policy on this? How will that policy change if the feds change their rules?
Who will monitor airline usage to be sure government workers take the lowest fare, not the airline that they like to collect miles on?
Top Federal Contractors List
GovExec.com has created a list of the top 100 government contractors in 2000. I bet there is someone near you doing work you have not reported on in a long time. How do they make political contributions, to whom, what kind of work do they do?
Topping the list:
1 Lockheed Martin Corp.
2 Boeing Co.
3 Raytheon Co.
4 Northrop Grumman Corp.
5 General Dynamics Corp.
6 University of California System
7 TRW Inc.
8 Bechtel Group Inc.
9 Science Applications Intl. Corp.
10 United Technologies Corp.
11 BNFL Inc.
12 General Electric Co.
13 Computer Sciences Corp.
14 Amerisource Distribution Corp.
15 Honeywell Inc.
16 Carlyle Group
17 California Institute of Technology
18 Fluor Corp.
19 Textron Inc.
20 DynCorp
What is the government buying?
This is especially interesting information as you look into how the government spends money. We used to look for widgets, now, be alert to contract service work.
GovExec says, “Welcome to the 21st century, where it is all about services. Just look at the buying patterns.
Between fiscal 1990 and 2000, purchases of supplies and equipment by federal agencies fell by $25 billion, while purchases of services increased by $17 billion. Services now account for nearly 43 percent of all federal contracting, the largest spending category, according to the General Accounting Office. The shift is most evident in information technology, where service contracts grew from $3.7 billion in fiscal 1990 to $13.4 billion in 2000. Another big push has been in the area of professional services, such as administrative and management support, which catapulted from $12.3 billion in 1990 to more than $21 billion in 2000. “We are not really sure what is driving the professional services contracts,” says David Cooper, director of acquisition and sourcing management at GAO. “We are seeing a number of studies being mandated by Congress, and those get contracted out.”
