The New York Democrat unsuccessfully introduced a bill during the last Congress to ban smoking within 25 feet of any federal building’s entrances, exits, windows that can be opened and ventilation intakes. Engel reintroduced the bill Nov. 18 to correspond with the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke Out smoking-cessation campaign.

The Surgeon General reported in 2006 that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. One step we can take in limiting such exposure is to free the entrances of buildings of the clouds of smoke often found when smokers gather outside of entrances and exits. The problem with this is simple – how else are people going to avoid secondhand smoke when the only ways in and out of a building is blocked by smoke?”

The bill would clarify various levels of guidance involving smoking near federal buildings. The General Services Agency banned smoking in courtyards and within 25 feet of doorways at GSA-controlled buildings, effective June 19, 2009.

A 1997 executive order banned smoking in all Executive Branch buildings, as well as all inside space owned, rented or leased by the Executive Branch.

What say you, feds? Is smoking an annoyance at your workplace? Or are you a smoker that would be annoyed by any new regulations?

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has unanimously approved Erroll Southers as administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and Daniel Gordon as administrator for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. The committee approved both nominations by voice vote Nov. 19.

It’s unclear whether the Senate will vote on these, or any other nominations, before it recesses sometime next week for Thanksgiving. Both nominees are considered non controversial.

The bill would entitle domestic partners to myriad federal benefits, including medical benefits and long-term care insurance. To receive the benefits, the partner and the federal employee would have to sign an affidavit affirming that they are in a committed, long-term relationship and live together except for financial, work or other reasons.

Votes on the bill were split along party lines. Republicans spent several hours offering a series of amendments, including one to open federal benefits up to anyone living in a federal employee’s home.

The bill now goes to the full House for consideration.

For more on H.R. 2517 and the committee’s debate, check back with Federal Times Thursday.

In the video, an employee at Bushways Packing Inc. in Grand Isle tries to skin alive a days-old calf in front of an alleged USDA inspector, among other abuses. A Humane Society investigator took the video while employed undercover at the slaughterhouse.

“This government official tells the worker, on hidden camera, that if another USDA inspector saw this, the plant would be shut down, but he allows the abuse to continue,” the Humane Society said in a news release.

Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack called the abuse “deplorable” and “callous.” He said employees are obligated to report noncompliant behavior.
Both USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and inspector general are investigating.

In a Nov. 4 letter to SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue, AFGE Council 220 President Witold Skwierczynski said an SSA negotiator told Council 220 members in October that swine flu “is not a serious communicable disease.”

Skwierczynski also said the negotiator and other SSA managers have threatened employees with disciplinary action should they decline to do face-to-face interviews with people who appear to be ill.

The negotiator said anyone who appears to be sick could be taken to to a private room and an SSA employee could telephone the room to interview the client regarding benefits, Skwierczynski said. The union leader called on SSA to change its policies to meet Health and Human Services Department guidelines for swine flu prevention.

“We regret that Mr. Skwierczynski continues to fabricate reports for media attention on this important public health issue,” said SSA spokesman Mark Hinkle. “Our policies meet or exceed everything Health and Human Services is recommending.”

Sixteen committee Republicans sent a letter to Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., on Nov. 4, calling on him to schedule immediate hearings to analyze the impact H.R. 3692 may have on the FEHBP. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Nov. 5 she has the votes to pass the health care bill on Nov. 7.

In the letter, Republicans said they need clarification on what the bill could do to participants in the FEHBP.

We believe the legislation in its current form may have a significant impact on FEHBP, including the possibility that FEHBP may not be deemed a ‘qualified health benefits plan’ for purposes of the bill, which will have the effect of either forcing federal employees out of their current coverage and into the ‘public option,’ or subjecting them to a tax for failure to obtain ‘acceptable health coverage.”

The Republicans are just trying to stall the health care bill with “baseless concerns,” Towns replied in a Nov. 4 news release.

Any suggestion that federal employees may be forced out of insurance coverage and subjected to an additional tax is false and has no basis in the text of the bill.  Under H.R. 3962, federal employees will remain in their current system, and will also benefit from the same improvements to health insurance plans that all other Americans will enjoy, such as ending copayments for preventative medicine and automatic enrollment.  Insurance providers participating in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) will be subject to the same rules and regulations covering all other health insurance plans.”

In the video game world, your Web site is ‘Pong.’”

– Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., told Greg Long, executive director of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, at a Nov. 3 hearing in reference to the state of the TSP’s Web site, comparing it to one of the first arcade games.

The board is working to make its Web site more user friendly and improve the information available, Long told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subcommitee on the federal workforce, postal service and the District of Columbia.

Benjamin is the founder of the Bayou Le Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., a fishing village, and has served as its chief executive officer since its founding in 1990.

Benjamin has rebuilt the clinic several times, including after Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Atlanta neurosurgeon and CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was rumored earlier this year to be Obama’s first choice for surgeon general, but Gupta pulled his name from consideration, citing his desire to spend more time on his current work.

HR 2647 phases out the NSPS pay-for-performance system by Jan 1, 2012, and the Pentagon has six months from Wednesday to start transferring employees over to their original pay system. For many employees, that means a return to the General Schedule.

The bill also contains a number of provisions long anticipated by federal employees:

• Federal Employment Retirement System (FERS) employees will be able to count unused sick leave toward their years of service, just as Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) employees can. This may end the epidemic of “FERS flu,” where soon-to-retire employees burn off sick leave because they couldn’t receive credit for it.
• FERS employees returning to work for the federal government would be able to redeposit their annuities.
• CSRS employees who work part time at the end of their careers would be able to have their annuities recalculated to be based only on their full-time salaries.
• Retirees returning to work for the federal government would be able to collect their full salaries while drawing their annuities. Agencies used to be able to pay rehired annuitants a full salary only if they obtained a waiver from the Office of Personnel Management.
• Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories will now receive locality pay instead of cost of living. Employees in the continental U.S. receive locality pay.

Feel free to celebrate in the comments section below, feds!

Members of Congress love to bash DHS and interrogate officials at frequent congressional hearings, but the House voted Thursday to approve a resolution, H.Res. 731, expressing appreciation for the work DHS employees do. Here’s the official description of the bill:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the employees of the Department of Homeland Security, their partners at all levels of government, and the millions of emergency response providers and law enforcement agents nationwide should be commended for their dedicated service on the Nation’s front lines in the war against acts of terrorism.