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.

You're a mean one.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Sue Brennan from the Postal Service, who said the AP report isn’t entirely accurate. The Postal Service isn’t canceling the whole letters to Santa program, but local post offices that don’t have the resources to redact childrens’ addresses and replace them with codes — as is now required by the Postal Service — will have to opt out of the program.

Large cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia can afford the security measures and will still answer letters sent locally that are addressed to Santa. But many small towns, such as North Pole, Alaska, don’t have the money and will have to end their participation in Operation Santa, Brennan said. Los Angeles is one of the few big cities also ending the program, she said.

Original post: This may be one of the saddest stories I’ll read today. The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Postal Service is killing Operation Santa, a 55-year-old program where volunteers answer childrens’ letters sent to Santa Claus with letters postmarked “North Pole, Alaska.” The problem? A sex offender wormed his way into the program last year and almost gained access to childrens’ names and addresses. And rather than jump through the hoops that would be required to completely safeguard kids, the cash-strapped post office decided it’s easier to just scrap the whole thing:

Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child’s letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide.

The agency now prohibits volunteers from having access to children’s family names and addresses, said spokeswoman Sue Brennan. The Postal Service instead redacts the last name and addresses on each letter and replaces the addresses with codes that match computerized addresses known only to the post office – and leaves it up to individual post offices if they want to go through the time-consuming effort to shield the information.

Anchorage-based agency spokeswoman Pamela Moody said dealing with the tighter restrictions is not feasible in Alaska.

I remember being thrilled when I got my letter back from Santa Claus when I was a kid, and it’s a shame this one bad apple has ruined the program for everybody.

I know President Barack Obama still has hundreds of positions to fill. But the top job at the Office of Special Counsel would seem to be an important one. The agency hasn’t had political leadership since October 2008, when the Bush administration forced Bloch to resign.

OSC employees I’ve talked to generally say the agency needs some reorganization, but William Reukauf, the acting special counsel, told me last year that he planned to act as a caretaker. Reorganization, in other words, would have to wait for political leadership. He told Government Executive in May that the agency is “looking forward anxiously” for a new political leader.

That’s what an executive order meant to curb the government’s rate of erroneous payments will say, Peter Orszag, Office of Management and Budget director, told reporters during a Nov. 17 briefing on the value of improper payments made by the government in 2009.

Currently, contractors face no penalties when the government discovers an improper payment was made. All contractors have to do is pay back the sum without interest or penalty. The executive order, which will be issued in the coming week, will change that by allowing agencies to suspend, debar and fine contractors that fail to report these payments. That will create strong incentive for contractors to be vigilant in monitoring their government payments, said Danny Werfel, the controller of OMB’s Office of Federal Financial Management.

Werfel said:

The way it works today is if we give a contractor money that they have not earned and they never report it to us, but we just so happen to find it through an audit, all they have to do is make us whole. There are no additional damages on top of that. And that’s what the executive order would pursue as a way of incentivizing contractors to immediately tell us where we made an error, so they’re part of the solution and not part of the problem.”

In sum, agencies misapplied $98 billion in federal funding in 2009, up from $72 billion in 2008. The payments were made on a variety of programs, such as Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, school nutrition programs, education grants, homeland security grants, unemployment insurance and other social programs.

The 36 percent, $26 billion jump is due to improved detection, stricter reporting rules and the increase in federal payments made in response to the economic downturn, Orszag said. All told, that’s an error rate of 5 percent on the nearly $2 trillion worth of programs measured in fiscal 2009. Not all of the improper payments resulted from fraud, however. In addition to government errors, other causes may be as innocent as a doctor’s illegible signature on a Medicare form, Orszag said.

In addition to penalizing contractors that fail to return improper payments, the pending executive order will curb improper payments by demanding agencies:

• Establish a Web site to disclose and track the total amount of improper payments on a program. The Web site will include error rates by agency and program, and an email address for the public to report suspected waste, fraud and abuse.
• Report on errors more than once a year (the current practice).
• Designate a Senate-confirmed official to be accountable for meeting improper payment reduction targets. If the agency misses targets two years in a row, the agency’s head, chief financial officer and inspector general must give OMB a plan describing why the agency failed to meet its goals and what it will do to meet targets going forward.
• Employ new management techniques, such as forensic auditing, to detect and prevent improper payments.
• Share data with other agencies about entities or individuals that received improper payments because they weren’t eligible for the benefits. This will prevent that entity or person from receiving improper payments from other programs.
• Establish plans to reduce program errors that do not interfere with payments to legitimate beneficiaries.
• Create incentives for states, agencies, and recipients to report payment errors.

The memo, from OPM director John Berry, requires all agencies to get OPM’s permission before moving political appointees into career positions (at all levels). OPM previously required permission for such moves only during election years. The policy, which takes effect in 2010, applies to anyone who has held a politically-appointed job in the previous five years.

OPM’s reviews will be conducted by career employees.

“Burrowing in” attracted a lot of attention late last year, as it does every election year: Roughly 20 political appointees switched to career jobs during the waning months of the Bush administration.

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.”

Here is how government performed, according to the INPUT report card:

Speed of Spending: B+ (Previous Grade: B+)
Reviewer’s Comments: “The federal government has continued to show unusual adeptness in dispensing a tremendous amount of money very quickly…At its current spending pace, the federal government will achieve 87 percent of the goal set by the president of having $350 billion spent by Sept. 30, 2010”

Contracting Effectiveness: B (Previous Grade: C-)
Reviewer’s Comments: “Federal agencies significantly improved in the use of fixed-price contracts and the percentage of contract awards made to small businesses…The federal government has awarded 48 percent of reported contract obligations using fixed-price contracts, a 30 percent increase over INPUT’s initial report card.”

Transparency and Reporting: C- (Previous Grade: D)
Reviewer’s Comments: “Each new report has been late…and the data quality of each new report has been poor upon release. However, overtime the quality and completeness of reports have improved. INPUT expects this will continue to be the case with the new recipient reports…A major area of disappointment continues to be the lack of transparency surrounding grant applications for many of the grant programs funded by the Recovery Act.”

Jobs Created: Incomplete (Previous Grade: Incomplete)
Reviewer’s Comments: “While the efforts to count jobs created or saved is a laudable goal, INPUT believes that accurate reporting of job creation is ultimately unknowable because of the number of recipients reporting, the complexity of the reports and the vagueness in the definition of a saved job.”

During the meeting, members of the Steering Committee on Federal Sustainability will be presented with some of the top suggestions from employees who participated in the White House’s GreenGov Challenge last month. More than 5,300 ideas were submitted during the two-week challenge.

The meeting will be streamed live online. Check back with www.federaltimes.com for a full report on the effort to go green.