Is this the true face of Uncle Sam?

The column, which cites our coverage on the issue, criticizes the Office of Personnel Management for failing to analyze why so few employees are fired — just one half of 1 percent of the government’s 2 million employees last year. (It’s also worth noting that the writer of the column, Mark Hemingway, is the husband of one of our former staff writers.)

What I found most interesting, however, was the headline above the column: “More hiring, but little firing, as Leviathan grows.” Not being an expert in Biblical references, I had to google the term to find out what Mr. Hemingway was talking about.

According to trusty Wikipedia, Leviathan is a sea monster referred to in the Old Testament. Many Christian literary sources equate the creature with Satan; in Demonology, Leviathan is the one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper.

So, what do you think? Is the federal government a good place to work, or the gateway to eternal damnation? Sound off below.

Now, that doesn’t mean feds should sleep in an extra two hours and expect to get to work on time. That two-hour delay is meant to give people plenty of time to deal with packed Metro trains and roads still clogged by snow.

Berry also said there will be no furloughs to cover the cost of the government shutdown.

The government has closed all four days so far this week, as well as a half day on Feb. 5. Berry said he is going to consult with the National Weather Service and local government officials at 6 p.m. today to decide if he’s going to make it a straight flush and close the government for the fifth day this week. But even if the government opens tomorrow, Berry confirmed that OPM will allow employees to take unscheduled leave if their neighborhoods are still snowed in.

Berry in December said that each snow day costs the government $102 million in lost productivity — which would currently place the government’s losses in the $450 million range – but he’s now backing away from that estimation. The $102 million figure was a straightforward calculation of the daily payroll of the region’s 270,000 employees, Berry said, but it doesn’t take into account emergency workers who aren’t allowed to take a snow day, essential workers or teleworkers. “The number that is used currently is woefully out of date,” Berry said. “When we are clear of the storm, we will be updating this calculation and will certainly put that on our Web site for both comments and distribution.”

Berry also said he wants to keep the government running as much as possible when deciding whether he will close the government, but said safety of federal employees and the public is the biggest factor in his decision.

OPM’s Web site has also been barraged all week — receiving as many as two million hits per hour — by federal employees trying to find out if they will have work the next day. The site crashed several times earlier in the week, but Berry said OPM switched to a cloud computing system to handle the load and hasn’t crashed since.

To help employees determine their 2010 salaries, the Office of Personnel Management has posted updated pay charts for employees in the General Schedule, Senior Executive Service and other pay systems.

We here at Fedline are glad to pass them along, but you know the saying: Don’t kill the messenger.

And beginning July 1, people enrolled in the program might also be able to lower their monthly student loan payments based on a debt to income ratio. Take a look at this online calculator from the Education Department to find out if you might qualify for an income-based repayment plan, and if so, how much your monthly payments might be.

OPM itself already has filled the 10 cardboard bins it has at the entrance to its Washington headquarters three times over, Berry said. The government hopes to collect 1 million pounds of food by the end of summer.

OPM launched the food drive because food banks often run low during the summer months, when people are often on vacation and forget to donate. Also, low-income children who are on summer vacation don’t get school lunches or breakfasts and could go hungry, Berry said:

So right when parents need the most help and they turn to the community food banks, unfortunately many of those shelves are getting thin, because the demands in our economic times are tough. [...] Federal employees know how blessed they are. They’ve got good jobs, they’re respected by their nation. This is an opportunity for them to give back to their communities and I know they’re going to step up to this plate.

And Berry said OPM is cooking up a contest to see which agency can donate the most pounds of food per employee, though he hasn’t yet settled on a prize.

OPM plans to track how much food has been donated at the drive’s official Web site, www.fedsfeedfamilies.gov.

OPM Director John Berry and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., will announce details of the “Feds Feed Families” national food drive Tuesday afternoon at Food For Others’ Virginia warehouse in Fairfax. They’ll be joined by Lynn Brantley, director of the Capitol Area Food Bank.

President Obama has called upon all Americans to give back to their local communities, and the federal workforce has quickly mobilized. This is an unprecedented undertaking by federal workers to meet the needs of our neighbors by collecting one million pounds of food in this short amount of time,” Berry said in a news release.

E-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com if you’d like to talk. If you’d prefer that your name not be published, that would be fine.

And for employees at agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration or Customs and Border Protection – who could come into contact with travelers who may have contracted swine flu — the memo also includes advice on how to manage such encounters. OPM recommends that when a traveler is coughing, showing signs of a fever, or other symptoms that could indicate swine flu:

• Separate that individual to a private room or other area that is at least six feet away from employees and the public.
• After separating the traveler from others, notify the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine station.
• Give the ill traveler a surgical mask to keep him from infecting others.
• If possible, isolate the ill traveler in a room separate from the airspace of others.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Hewitt have settled their dispute related to the implementation of the RetireEZ program. OPM has rescinded its October 16, 2008 termination of the contract for default and the contract has now been terminated by mutual agreement.  We’re happy this matter has been resolved and we believe both parties are pleased with the outcome.  We look forward to continuing to deliver outsourced retirement solutions for our current and future clients.

OPM and Hewitt aren’t saying anything about the terms of the settlement, and aren’t saying how much, if any, money OPM has recovered from Hewitt. OPM paid Hewitt $21 million before stopping work on the contract in May; the contract was originally valued at $290 million over its 10-year lifecycle. Hewitt’s calculator passed only 33 percent of tests OPM administered in early 2008, when it was contractually obligated to pass tests 95 percent of the time.

OPM still hasn’t decided how it will move forward on creating an automated annuity calculator, which was meant to ensure retirees no longer had to wait months to get their full pensions. “We’re assessing our options and will move accordingly,” OPM spokesman Mike Orenstein said.

In a letter sent yesterday to the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the groups asked the agency to send a notice to CSRS employees reminding them of this wrinkle.

Survivors of Federal Employees Retirement System employees who leave the government and die before applying for a pension are eligible to receive a survivor annuity. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced a bill in 2007 that would have ensured CSRS employees’ survivors would get an annuity regardless of when the employee left federal service, but it died in committee.

The Office of Personnel Management just told Federal Times that the weather isn’t prompting the government to make any major scheduling changes. But keep reading, and we’ll update you as soon as we hear anything new.

And please drive safely tonight and tomorrow morning — we’re now expected to get one to three inches of snow today, another inch or two tonight, and possibly sleet and freezing rain. Not quite the snowmageddon some had expected, but it’s enough to make commutes nasty.

UPDATE: Some agencies, however, are making minor adjustments to their schedules. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for example, has postponed a safety and security workshop that was scheduled for tomorrow. The workshop will now be Feb. 3.

If you know of any scheduling changes at your agency due to the weather, e-mail me at slosey@federaltimes.com and I’ll post them.

Whipple thanked Obama for the appointment in a statement issued this morning:

I am humbled to have been designated by President Obama to serve as the acting director of OPM, an agency it has been my pleasure to serve for the past eight years. I look forward to leading OPM until the president appoints and the United States Senate confirms the next director.

So while it looks like Berry is indeed in the running, OPM is not as close to having a new boss as we thought yesterday.

Berry previously served as executive director of the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the nation’s wildlife, and before that, as assistant secretary of the Interior Department for management. In the mid-1990s he directed government relations for the Smithsonian and, between 1985 and 1994, served as legislative director for Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

John Berry

Among the first to welcome the news was the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley. In a statement released today, the union leader hailed Berry as someone who will “help return respect to the federal work force and help attract the best and the brightest to public service.” Kelley said she worked with Berry while he was an aide to Hoyer in the creation of the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, which created locality pay rates and customized pay scales for specialized groups of federal employees, such as administrative law judges and certain law enforcement officials.

What do you think of the choice of Berry as OPM director? What will be his biggest challenges?