waste & abuse

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 21, 2000 | by Sean Paige

They Call It Riding the Gravy Train

A group representing managers at government agencies is requesting a reduction in the level of workers' compensation benefits that federal employees receive. The current package, they say, which pays an injured worker 75 percent of his or her salary (but which actually can amount to a pay raise, since those benefits are tax-exempt), may discourage some from hurrying back to their paper-pushing. The Federal Managers Association believes reducing workers' comp payments to 66.6 percent of regular salary will increase the incentive for their workers to recover and return to work sooner -- or at least before hell freezes over.

In another proposed reform to the Federal Employees Compensation Act, or FECA, managers want to end the practice of paying workers' comp benefits out of their salary and expense budgets, arguing that instead of creating an incentive to increase worker safety, as the rule is intended, it is allowing nonworking beneficiaries to bleed dry the already-anemic agencies.

The charge-back provision was instituted to make agencies accountable for safety, the managers wrote in a letter to the Department of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, petitioning for the changes. However, it has led to many managers seeing their rapidly downsizing budgets tapped to pay for long-term disability cases.

Federal-employee labor unions naturally are opposed to any changes to FECA, arguing that there's no reason injured federal employees should have to suffer any further financial devastation or risk because of their injuries. And a review of the managers' proposals is under way at Labor.

But don't expect a ruling -- especially one in support of the federal managers -- any time before Election Day, given the cozy relationship Vice President Al Gore needs to maintain with government-employee labor unions.

RELATED ARTICLE: The HOV and HOV-Nots

States and the federal government have spent billions of dollars during the last decade creating High Occupancy Vehicle, or HOV, lanes for major freeways. Such lanes ostensibly were added in an effort to save the planet through carpooling -- but actually it's a way to punish the selfish solo driver by condemning him or her to bumper-to-bumper limbo. However, the HOV concept has gone through an interesting transmutation: Experts question their effects on congestion and ecological efficacy, while transportation authorities have found novel ways to cash in on beleaguered commuters by offering single-occupancy cars access to HOV -- at a price.

Critics say the lanes not only are adding to congestion but actually may be hurting air quality, since slow-moving or idling vehicles, such as those crawling along in non-HOV lanes, are creating more pollution than cars cruising along in HOV lanes. So by slowing traffic on the non-HOV part of the freeway, or diverting it to gridlocked secondary roads, the lanes actually may be increasing pollution. New Jersey reportedly has abandoned the concept altogether because state officials there now believe it is counterproductive.

In the meantime, transportation authorities in some areas have decided that it's acceptable to be selfish and drive alone in the HOV lane, if drivers are willing to pay for the privilege of polluting. California, for instance, which has spent $2.3 billion building carpool lanes during the last several decades, has converted them to so-called HOT lanes, where fat cats willing to pay the fee (Can we call it a tax? Why not?) can whiz right along with the carpoolers, while the commoners and serfs (who also paid the taxes to build the lanes from which they've been barred) must spend the rest of their meaningless little lives driving slowly, enduring the torture of drive-time radio.

California Assemblyman Tom McClintock, a Republican from Northridge, has authored a bill that would do away with the lanes, thus ending the growing discrimination between the HOVs and the HOV-nots. If you open up these diamond lanes to all traffic, then everybody gets to work on time, McClintock recently said, striking a blow for the commuters of Southern California.