Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990

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The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 or FEPCA (H.R. 5241,

United States Government that became apparent in the 1980s as Federal civil service salaries fell behind those in the private sector
. FEPCA provided guidelines to achieve pay comparability between Federal and non-Federal jobs. FEPCA was enacted as Section 529 of the Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Act, 1991 (Public Law 101-509, signed into law on 5 November 1990).

FEPCA Provisions

The most far reaching provisions of the Act were to change the way pay is set for the

Boards of Contract Appeals (CA), certain law enforcement officers, employees in the Senior Biomedical Research Service, and police of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint
. FEPCA also authorized recruitment and relocation bonuses and retention allowances in special situations as well. A major feature of the Act, locality pay, is discussed below.

Locality Pay

FEPCA provides for a two-part annual pay adjustment for General Schedule workers: an across-the-board pay adjustment and a locality pay adjustment that varies by pay locality. Locality pay may be extended by

Executive Order
to other pay plans outside the General Schedule. Employees receiving special rates for hard-to-fill positions receive the higher of their special salary rate or locality pay.

Implementation of FEPCA

A common misconception is that the locality adjustments are determined according to cost of living fluctuations and other regional considerations.

Consumer Price Index
that tracks consumer prices. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have complained about the methodology used to compute locality adjustments and the projected cost of closing the pay gap (as determined by FEPCA) between Federal salaries and those in the private sector. As a result, FEPCA has never been fully implemented.

Although FEPCA provides for an automatic formula to determine the annual pay raise, this formula has been ignored due to the cost of implementation. The President has authority under FEPCA to submit an "alternative" pay plan with a lower raise than that called for by the FEPCA formula (or none at all) "if because of national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare" [5 U.S.C. ยง5303(b)(1)]. In reality, the final pay raise has been decided by Congress, which may authorize higher or lower increases than what were originally requested by the President in his annual budget submissions.

See also

  • General Schedule

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-8144-1099-8

External links
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