By the end of the week, many federal employees will see a small bump in their next paychecks, the first signs of the president’s payroll tax deferral.

For active-duty military members, the president’s payroll tax deferral is already here, as mid-month paychecks arrived Tuesday for most.

Employees whose gross, biweekly wages are $3,999.99 or less are subject to the president’s payroll tax deferral.

Employees and servicemembers who meet this guideline will automatically have their Social Security taxes — 6.2% of their income — deferred from their upcoming paychecks. There is no option to opt-out of the president’s payroll tax deferral, nor is there an opportunity to opt in.

Federal employees and military members will be expected to pay deferred taxes back starting next January and through April, though neither the administration nor individual payroll providers have described in detail exactly how that will work.

Based on the messages that agencies and payroll providers have sent to their employees, which Federal News Network has reviewed, the expectation is that employees will pay deferred taxes back in installments from January through April 2021.

Previous IRS guidance mentioned employees may face interest and penalties if they fail to pay deferred taxes back by April, but there are few other details.

Calculate your total deferred payroll taxes

To help you estimate how much you’ll temporarily save over the course of the next eight paychecks — and how much you’ll have to pay back in 2021 — Federal News Network has created a simple calculator for your planning purposes.

This calculator is intended to give you an estimate of the Social Security taxes that will be deferred for each of the next eight upcoming paychecks, including the check due between Sept. 18 and Sept. 22, depending on the timing of direct deposit.

The calculator will also estimate the total amount of deferred Social Security taxes for those eight pay periods, from September through the end of December.

To use the calculator, enter your basic (taxable) income. You can choose to enter to your annual, monthly or biweekly salary.

For example, let’s say your annual salary is $80,000 a year. Click “calculate tax deferral.”

In this case, your biweekly wages are $3,076.93 (or $80,000 divided by 26 pay periods in the year). Under the president’s new policy, $190.77 ($3,076.93 multiplied by 6.2%) would be deferred from one of those upcoming paychecks.

If nothing changed about your salary, grade or rank between now and the end of the year, you would receive a total of $1,526.16 in deferred Social Security taxes over the course of the president’s payroll tax deferral policy, or eight pay periods.

Again, these are estimates — designed to help you plan your finances for the rest of the calendar year and give you a better sense of what you’ll have to pay back starting next January.

For the most accurate results, enter in your most recent monthly or biweekly wages when using the calculator. Using monthly or biweekly wages will give you the most accurate representation of your taxable wages at the current point in time.

Because your Social Security taxes will be deferred on a paycheck-by-paycheck basis, the total may change on a biweekly basis. You may, for example, work overtime or accrue hazardous duty or combat pay for one pay period this fall but not another.

Therefore, the amount of deferred taxes may differ from one paycheck to another. Depending on your circumstances, working overtime or accruing hazardous duty pay may make you ineligible for payroll tax deferral during one or several pay periods but not others.

Read more Federal Pay news

A promotion between now and the end of the year will also change your deferred taxes — or, depending on your new salary, make you ineligible for the payroll tax deferral altogether at any point between now and the end of the year.

In general, federal employees who make $104,000 a year or less will be impacted by the president’s payroll tax deferral policy.

Though federal employees’ annual salaries vary depending on their locality pay area, the payroll tax deferral seems to apply to a majority of the civilian workforce. In the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. locality pay area, most GS-12s and below fall under the $104,000 threshold.

In the rest of the United States, the $104,000 salary threshold falls at GS-13, step 5 and below.

Based on December 2019 salary data from the Office of Personnel Management, approximately 1.3 million civilian federal employees are impacted by the president’s payroll tax deferral policy.

A little more than 1.3 million active-duty military members are also subject to the payroll tax deferral, based on an analysis of Defense Department personnel and salary data from July.

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The Trump administration has called for a whole-of-government approach toward fighting the coronavirus.

For some agencies, that means calling on federal retirees with a deep sense of public service duty to return to government and join the fight.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which already had some 40,000 vacancies during pre-virus times, was the first to put the call out to reemployed annuitants.

The agency is hiring doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other retired medical professionals on a full-time basis to return to VA. Many of them will likely join with a full salary and their annuities, thanks to a special authority from the Office of Personnel Management.

VA is treating more than 3,000 coronavirus cases among veterans, but the department also serves as the nation’s backup health system during a major health crisis. So far New York and New Jersey have turned to VA for help during the coronavirus pandemic.

Other agencies may soon join VA in calling for additional reemployed annuitants to help with the coronavirus fight.

Thinking of joining them?

James Marshall, a federal benefits expert with the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) Association, said it doesn’t matter whether you’re filling out the application now — or you’re still employed at your agency.

Knowing the ins and outs of returning to government as a reemployed annuitant will help you better plan financially for retirement, he said.

“Before you retire… if you think there’s a small chance you might want to return to federal service later on in life, you want to learn all about the rules and regulations governing reemployed annuitants, because you may or may not want to be [one],” Marshall said Wednesday on Your Turn with Mike Causey.

Here’s what you need to know about returning to government as a reemployed annuitant.

What is a reemployed annuitant?

Reemployed annuitants are retired federal employees who have been rehired by their former agency or another agency in the federal government.

Under a typical arrangement, a reemployed annuitant will be paid by the agency for his or her work. The agency, however, will offset that salary by the amount of the retiree’s federal pension.

There are a few exceptions where pensions stop and former feds, perhaps those who initially retired with a disability, return to government and pick up their careers where they left off. But those situations are rare, Marshall said.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, retired federal employees have always had a chance to return to government as reemployed annuitants, depending on the opportunities available. The Census Bureau, for example, brought back reemployed annuitants for the decennial count, Jessica Klement, NARFE’s staff vice president for policy and programs, said.

The Agriculture Department brought back retired employees to temporarily fill vacancies created by the relocation of two of its research bureaus from Washington D.C., to Kansas City.

What is a dual compensation waiver?

Dual compensation waivers allow an agency to rehire a federal retiree and pay them a full salary, plus their usual annuity under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).

“Even outside of an emergency, this is the most common situation that I encounter,” Marshall said. “A lot of it has to do with DoD and other agencies that are rehiring people a lot.”

Agencies already had the authority to offer these waivers, per a decades-old provision in the annual defense authorization bill. Under that authority, agencies can use these dual compensation waivers to hire reemployed annuitants on a part-time basis without OPM approval.

That authority has been renewed every five years or so, and Congress mostly recently included another extension in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. This authority for part-time annuitants now runs through 2024.

But agencies still need OPM permission to grant dual compensation waivers to reemployed annuitants for full-time work. That’s what VA asked for last month, and OPM quickly gave them the approval.

OPM has said it will quickly grant approval to other agencies, should they also seek full-time reemployed annuitants during the coronavirus pandemic.

I have a job offer as reemployed annuitant. What should I know first?

First, retirees should find out whether their potential position will allow for retirement coverage, Marshall said.

Every federal appointment is different, and your eligibility for retirement and health benefits under these positions may vary depending on a variety of factors.

Not all reemployed annuitant positions, especially those that are considered temporary in nature, will allow for retirement coverage, Marshall said. Annuitants who accept a position that doesn’t allow for retirement coverage, for example, won’t be able to contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan.

Many of the positions open to reemployed annuitants during the current coronavirus pandemic may be temporary positions, Marshall acknowledged.

That’s why it’s a good idea to ask your agency the following questions before accepting a job offer as a reemployed annuitant:

• Will my annuity continue?
• Will my salary be affected?
• Will I have retirement coverage or not?
• How will any of my federal benefits, such as coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), be affected? What are my options?

I have a dual compensation waiver. What are the benefits?

Under a dual compensation waiver, reemployed annuitants will receive a full salary. These retirees will not contribute to their pensions in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) or Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), and their annuities stay the same.

CSRS-offset and FERS retirees will pay a Social Security tax, but regular CSRS retirees will not, Marshall said.

Reemployed annuitants with dual compensation waivers are not allowed to contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan, but there are other benefits of taking a full salary, Marshall added.

Reemployed annuitants who, for example, take a position that would typically allow them to have federal health insurance can ask their agencies to transfer that insurance from OPM to their current new jobs, Marshall said.

“Pre-taxed health insurance cost is a lot better while you’re working as a reemployed annuitant than having it on a post-taxed basis in retirement with OPM,” he said.

Reemployed annuitants who were paying for Medicare Part B can save some money as well.

“I can cancel paying for Part B, because my employment health insurance becomes my primariy provider,” Marshall said. “That can save me some money as well while I’m working as a reemployed annuitant. But again, that’s only if the position is one that can pay retirement coverage.”

But again, there’s a catch. Reemployed annuitants who take positions that last a year or less may not be eligible to transfer their federal health insurance, Marshall added.

He suggested retirees ask about the length and insurance opportunities associated with each reemployed annuitant position during the interview process.

Are there any benefits to not taking a dual compensation waiver?

Yes, there may be some benefits — again, depending on whether the position allows retirement coverage or not.

Some agencies may allow their reemployed annuitants to choose whether they want to accept a full salary under a dual compensation waiver or take the salary offset instead.

Accepting a salary offset would allow reemployed annuitants to accrue more savings toward their retirement, Marshall said.

“You could also be allowed to contribute to the TSP again, which means if you already passed the age of 72 or 70.5 years old, there wouldn’t be any required minimum distributions anymore while you’re working with a salary offset,” he said.

There may be other benefits. You could, depending on the position, transfer your federal health and dental insurance to your agency for a premium conversion.

In addition, new reemployed annuitants may be able to open flexible spending accounts again or have an easier time applying to the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program, Marshall said.

I received a buyout before leaving government. Do I have to pay it back if I return as an reemployed annuitant?

It depends.

Typically, employees who take a Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP)  but later return to government within five years of separation must pay the full amount back.

But agencies may have the authority to waive the typical payback requirement. Marshall suggested annuitants who have taken a VSIP in the past should ask about that authority during the interview process.

“Certainly ask the hiring [agency] if they have the authority to waive that payback, he said.  “If they don’t, you have to pay that back before you can land your first day on the job.”

Federal employees who have been offered a buyout but think they may want to return to government later on can choose to deny the VSIP.

How do I find federal jobs for reemployed annuitants?

Your best bet is USAJOBS.gov, Marshall said.

It’s ultimately up to each agency to decide how they want to advertise their positions. Some may explicitly indicate a job is open to reemployed annuitants, but some may not.

Retirees applying to federal positions on USAJOBS will be asked whether they receive a military or civilian pension, Marshall said.

That’s the place to indicate your status as a federal retiree. From there, agencies will likely ask for more information.

“From there they’re going to let you whether or not there’s a waiver for that position, if it wasn’t advertised. A lot of times it’s not advertised,” Marshall said. “Because they’re really offering the job to anybody who’s qualified.”

Where can I find more information or advice on reemployed annuitants?

OPM has a variety of frequently asked questions on reeemployed annuitants here.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has a page on the career opportunities available during the coronavirus pandemic, with a special page for interested federal retirees here.

NARFE will offer a free webinar Tuesday, April 14 at noon on this subject. You can sign up to register here.

But it’s important to remember the 3.1% figure is an average. The raises feds will actually receive in 2020 will vary a fair amount depending on where they work. According to a Federal News Network analysis of data the Office of Personnel Management published on Thursday, pay increases for General Schedule employees will range from 2.85% to 3.52%.

Why?

Congress specified an across-the-board base pay increase of 2.6% in the 2020 funding bills, but lawmakers left it up to the executive branch to distribute the remaining 0.5% of the publicly-advertised “average” across the federal government’s more than 50 locality pay areas.

Locality pay was originally meant to ensure federal workers living in a given area of the country were paid salaries that are roughly competitive with what private sector employees could expect to make for the same type of work.

But presidents of both parties — since 1994 — have used their authority to deviate from the formulas meant to ensure pay comparability, and the system has become distorted over time.

This year’s dataset shows the largest raises will go to employees in the National Capital Region. The smallest ones will go to the “Rest of the United States” group that’s meant to cover federal employees who work outside any of the designated locality areas.

The table below shows the effective pay increases federal civilian employees will actually receive, based on their locality.

Source: Office of Personnel Management

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 raises defense and domestic spending limits for the next two years by about $100 billion. It also extends the debt ceiling through July 31, 2021 — sets aside additional funding veterans health care and other initiatives.

And like the previous two-year budget deal, the 2019 bill doesn’t tap federal employee retirement to offset significant spending increases in 2020 and 2021. Congress has used previous two-year, bipartisan budget deals to set higher federal employee contributions. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 required that new federal employees hired after 2013 contribute 4.4% toward their retirements.

The prospect of a similar offset was unlikely with a democratically-controlled House. But the Senate had briefly considered a proposal in its 2020 budget resolution, which suggested the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee could find $15 billion in savings over the next five years by raising federal employee contributions toward their retirement.

Congress never adopted the budget resolution. The offsets that were included in 2019 budget deal are relatively minimal and extend the authority to collect customs fees for 10 more years.

The recent budget deal also avoids the threat of automatic spending cuts through sequestration, which would have kicked in at the start of the new fiscal year under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

The budget deal is a start, but only that. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 reflects what agencies will spend over the course of the next two years — not how they’ll actually spend the agreed-upon funding set by these caps.

More specifically, the Bipartisan Budget Act doesn’t physically appropriate discretionary funding for individual agencies and programs over the next two years.

Instead, twelve separate appropriations bills will spell out exactly what priorities and programs agencies will devote discretionary funding toward in 2020. Congress must pass all 12 of these bills — or a package of some of them — to avoid a full or partial government shutdown by Oct. 1.

On this front, the outlook is much murkier.

The House passed 10 of 12 appropriations bills before leaving Capitol Hill for the August recess.

One of these bills, the financial services and general government appropriations bill, cleared the House in late June. The bill includes a 3.1% pay raise for federal employees in 2020, as well as several provisions aimed at blocking the Trump administration’s proposed merger of the Office of Personnel Management with the General Services Administration.

The story, however, is much different in Senate. Not one appropriations bill has cleared the Senate, or the chamber’s appropriations committee for that matter. Appropriations subcommittees have yet to publicly release a draft of a single bill, mostly because senators and staffers were waiting for congressional leadership to agree to topline spending numbers.

“Federal employees are counting on Congress and the administration to finish the job by passing appropriations bills into law, on time, and giving federal employees the fair pay they deserve,” National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said Thursday in a statement.

When the Senate returns to Capitol Hill Sept 9, it will have about three legislative work weeks to come to some sort of funding agreement by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The Senate could introduce and vote on its own version of these appropriations bills in regular order.

But given Congress’ deadline, that scenario is unlikely if lawmakers want to avoid a second government shutdown this year. Some sort of temporary continuing resolution that extends current funding levels is perhaps a more likely scenario, though congressional leadership could agree to an omnibus spending package for 2020.

Predicting the prospects of a federal pay raise at this point are also difficult, particularly without a Senate appropriations proposal. Both the House and Senate must agree to a number and pass some sort of measure to override the President’s proposed pay freeze — if implementing a federal pay raise is, in fact, a priority for Congress.

President Donald Trump indicated his plans to freeze federal pay in his 2020 budget request. The President has until Aug. 31 to officially submit to Congress his plans to freeze federal pay, otherwise, employees are owed a pay adjustment that’s based on a statutory formula.

According to that formula, which is based on the Employment Cost Index, federal employees are owed a 3.1% raise next year. It’s for this reason that federal employee unions and organizations have pushed Congress to make their own recommendation on a raise — and return federal pay itself — to the appropriations process.

It wasn’t until after the 35-day government shutdown this year that lawmakers cleared a 1.9% federal pay raise for civilian employees in 2019. Agencies didn’t begin implementing the 2019 raise, retroactive to Jan. 1, until April.

The reaction is justified, considering it’s the third consecutive year the administration made such proposals in the president’s annual budget request. Even before that, Congress had made similar attempts during the Obama administration.

Some lawmakers are already declaring the president’s budget “dead on arrival,” but there are a few ways the administration’s proposed federal retirement cuts could materialize.

Watch the budget resolution, reconciliation

First, federal employees should keep an eye on the Senate budget resolution, which cleared the Budget Committee last week.

The resolution includes reconciliation instructions, which directs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to find $15 billion in savings over the next five years.

The reconciliation instructions don’t explicitly tell the committee what to do in order to meet the $15 billion savings goal. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel could meet the $15 billion goal by finding cuts or ways to generate revenue, Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) said last week.

“When we’re $22 trillion and project deficits of $109 trillion over the next 30 years, we have to look at this. We can’t take anything off the table,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the committee tasked with finding the $15 billion, said. “As chairman of the committee, I would certainly do everything we could to protect the federal workforce but get it in line with the private sector.”

Attempts from Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tim Kaine and Mark Warner (D-Va.) to strike those specific reconciliation instructions and keep federal retirement off the table in reconciliation negotiations failed.

But passage at the committee level is the first step in a long process. The Senate first needs to pass the 2020 budget resolution with these reconciliation instructions. The House would need to do the same, which under Democratic leadership, seems unlikely. The House hasn’t unveiled its own budget resolution yet, but it’s bound to look much different than the Senate’s version.

Next, the House and Senate will need to conference over the differences and agree to a joint budget resolution. Both chambers will need to vote again to pass the joint budget resolution before it’s adopted.

The goal of reconciliation is to secure a path for Congress to pass potentially contentious legislation with a simple majority of 50 votes in the Senate rather than the typical 60. Congress, for example, used reconciliation to pass the Affordable Care Act back in 2010.

But at this point, it’s unclear exactly what congressional leadership would use reconciliation for. The House last advanced reconciliation instructions back in 2017 — including directions to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to find $32 billion worth of federal retirement cuts — as the vehicle to advance tax legislation with a simple majority vote.

“There doesn’t seem to be an appetite to do that at all this year,” Klement said. “Where I think we would see it is [in] a major infrastructure or something that we can’t quite foresee, something else that comes up.”

Congress did, of course, pass major tax legislation and used budget reconciliation to get there, but the final resolution didn’t include federal retirement-related cuts.

Watch for sequester offsets

Still, federal employees haven’t been so lucky in the past.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 sets spending levels for defense and non-defense agencies. According to this law, lawmakers must raise spending caps themselves and find a way to offset the increases; otherwise, automatic spending cuts through sequestration will kick in.

These spending caps — and the hoops Congress must jump through to increase and offset them — have been at the center of lawmakers’ budget debates over the past several years.

Congress tapped into federal retirement benefits in 2013 to offset spending increases, which resulted in a change to the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS). Federal employees hired in 2014 or after contribute 4.4 percent to their pensions, as opposed to 3.1 percent for employees hired in 2013 and 0.8 percent for employees hired before 2013.

This scenario has been a concern for organizations like NARFE and others since then. Congress strongly considered raising employee pension contributions to offset spending under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.

Congress last year left federal retirement benefits untouched in the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act, which set spending for 2018 and 2019 and raised the caps by more than $300 billion. The budget deal included only $100 billion in offsets. Again, federal retirement benefits weren’t part of the deal.

But Congress hasn’t agreed to a plan for 2020 and 2021. It must first agree to raise spending caps or risk the return of sequestration. Then, lawmakers must find a way to offset an increase in those spending caps, and federal employees’ pensions could be a logical place to find savings.

“We still have to offset sequestration, and that is a more likely place to see some of these cuts play out,” Klement said.

Heated debates over what these spending limits will be is at the center of congressional discussions in the coming months. The Trump administration’s 2020 budget request recommends capping non-defense agencies at the BCA limit of $543 billion, a 9 percent drop from what Congress enacted in 2019. The administration isn’t proposing an increase in the defense spending cap of $576 billion, either. Instead, the White House is recommending it make up the difference through a dramatic boost to Overseas Contingency Operations funding to arrive at a total of $750 billion.

Achieving parity between defense and non-defense spending will be a top priority for Democrats, as it has been for years. Republicans have and will continue to advocate for deficit reductions. Federal employees’ retirement benefits may lie somewhere in the middle as Congress tries to find a compromise.

Some 72,000 federal employees in Birmingham, Alabama; Burlington, Vermont; Corpus Christi, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; San Antonio, Texas; and Virginia Beach/Norfolk, Virginia, broke free this year of the “rest of U.S.” designation. Employees in these areas now have their own, separate locality pay rates starting in 2019.

But for many of these employees in these areas, a shiny new location pay area may amount to a few hundred additional dollars in 2019 over the previous year.

The rates for 2019 and a comparison with 2018’s rates are listed below.

If employees in these areas hadn’t gotten their own locality pay designation this year, they would have seen a 15.67 percent adjustment, the “Rest of U.S.” rate for 2019. For employees in San Antonio, their new locality rate is less than half a percentage point from the “Rest of U.S. rate in 2019. For Birmingham, employees there will get locality boost that’s 0.1 percent higher than the rest of the country.

Employees in Omaha, Nebraska, will see a 0.2 percent bump over the rest of the U.S. Burlington, Vermont, will see the largest increase out of the six, with a 0.51 percent bump.

Several Federal News Network readers in one of the six, newly established locality pay areas had expressed their disappointment with the 2019 increases that for them, seemed small in comparison with the new adjustments that the rest of the country had received this year.

They questioned, via emails and Tweets to Federal News Network, whether the long, complex process the colleagues had gone through to secure a new locality pay area was worth the 0.1-to-0.5 percent bump.

But there are several reasons for the minimal locality pay rate adjustments this year.

2019 locality pay adjustment was minimal

First, locality pay increases in 2019 made up a relatively small slice of the average federal employee pay raise.

This year, the President approved an across-the-board raise of 1.4 percent, with just an additional 0.5 percent adjusted in locality pay rates, for a total average of 1.9 percent.

Of course, the announced federal pay raise during any given year reflects an average increase, meaning some federal employees may receive an adjustment that’s higher than the announced number, while others may see total salary adjustments that are lower.

Let’s use an example.

Let’s say you’re GS 9, step 1, and you live in the “Rest of U.S.” locality pay area.

In 2018, your GS base rate equaled $43,857. To calculate your 2019 base raise, increase $43,857 (your 2018 base pay rate) by the 2019 across-the-board base pay raise of 1.4 percent.

Next, increase $44,471 (your salary adjusted for the 2018 base pay raise) by your locality pay percentage for 2018. In this case, the 2019 locality pay increase for the “Rest of U.S.” is 15.67 percent.

The final total equals $51,440, meaning in total, your salary has increased 1.66 percent in 2019.

Locality pay adjustments, in this example for a “rest of U.S.” employee, accounted for $6,969 in 2019.

Using this same formula, a GS-9, step 1 employee in Virginia Beach will receive $51,546 in 2019, compared with the $50,598 an employee at the same GS level received in 2018 under “rest of U.S.” This employee would receive an additional $948 over the prior year’s salary.

A GS-9, step 1 in Birmingham will receive $51,484 in 2019, compared with $50,598 last year, a difference of $866 for the year.

It’s up to the President to set these locality pay adjustments for any given year.

These adjustments are based on the disparity between General Schedule pay and non-federal pay as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite common misconceptions, living costs or specific price levels like the Consumer Price Index aren’t factors when setting locality pay.

Instead, the BLS uses the National Compensation Survey to measure non-federal compensation in a particular labor market and compare it to federal pay for GS employees who perform similar work in the same region.

Pay disparities vary based on the region, and those variations matter when the President sets locality pay rates for each of the 53 areas.

“While the six new locality pay areas have pay disparities exceeding the RUS, it’s only been recently that BLS salary surveys have estimated pay disparities for those six locales that meet the criteria established by the pay agent for designation as separate locality pay areas,” a federal pay expert, who didn’t receive permission to speak with the press, told Federal News Network. “By contrast, the BLS data currently used in the locality pay program show considerably larger pay disparities for some larger metropolitan areas — like Los Angeles and New York City — and the President provided larger locality pay increases for those areas.”

Too many locality pay areas?

Second, the low locality rate adjustments for employees in the six new areas are also a result of the sheer number of locality pay areas, which has been steadily growing.

With the addition of the six new areas in 2019, there are now 53 distinct locality pay areas, a total that includes the “rest of U.S.” area that encompasses the other federal employees who don’t work within one of the 52 separate areas.

But additional locality pay areas doesn’t translate into more funding to spend on federal employee pay raises, the pay expert said. Locality pay accounts for a portion of the total General Schedule payroll. The more locality pay areas there are, the smaller the slices from the locality pay funding pool become.

“Allocating a locality pay increase among previously existing locality pay areas reduces the dollar amount that can be allocated to provide locality pay increases for new locality pay areas,” the pay expert said.

Changes ahead for the federal pay and locality system?

The process to establish a new locality pay area is long. Federal employees travel often long distances to Washington, D.C. once or twice a year to make their case to the Federal Salary Council, which hears stories and often alarming statistics about recruitment and retention difficulties at some agencies.

The council had, for example, first approved Burlington and Virginia Beach as separate locality pay areas back in November 2015. The pay agent approved them a year later before the regulatory process languished for nearly two more years. OPM finalized the creation of the two new areas in December 2018.

Employees in these areas before that had traveled to Washington, D.C. to make their case to the Salary Council for years. Some employees have gotten their local congressmen and union representatives involved.

Ron Sanders, chairman of the Federal Salary Council, has said during past council meetings that these stories from employees show the existing system isn’t working in their favor.

Council members are set to to release a report in the coming month or so that will outline a variety of options for potential changes to the existing federal pay system and the methodology the council uses to make decisions about locality pay.

Members representing federal employee unions, however, have already expressed their dissenting views and adamantly defended the existing locality pay methodology. Federal Salary Council Chairman Ron Sanders has said it plans to submit all the council’s views, including the unions’ opinions.

The President’s Pay Agent, a body composed of the Labor Secretary and directors of the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget, has signaled it’s ready to seriously consider changes to the existing system.

“Under prior administrations, the pay agent has expressed major methodological concerns about the
underlying model used to estimate the pay gaps cited in this report. We share those concerns,” the pay agent wrote in its most recent report, dated Nov. 30, 2018. “The comparisons of federal vs. non federal wages and salaries fail to reflect the reality of labor market shortages and excesses. They also require the calculation of a single average pay gap in each locality area, without regard to, for example, the differing labor markets for major occupational groups.”

According to BLS, private sector workers are paid, on average, 30.91 percent more than their counterparts in the federal government, but several organizations have questioned this assessment.

The Congressional Budget Office, for example, said federal employees are compensated at a rate that’s 17 percent higher than private sector workers. The Cato Institute put the gap in favor of the federal workforce even higher.

To learn more about the statute-based formulas that typically set across-the-board federal pay raise during many years, visit Federal News Network’s explainer on the topic here.

For those who are keeping track, the 2020 federal pay raise, should, on average, total 2.5 percent, according to the Employment Cost Index formula. This total doesn’t include any locality pay adjustments.

To learn more about how locality pay, what it is, what it means for your and your paycheck and how it differs across the country, find Federal News Network’s second explainer here.

The Office of Personnel Management updated its dismissal and closure procedures back in November to reflect new changes under the Administrative Leave Act. Congress in 2016 instructed OPM to create four different types of leave, including administrative leave, investigative leave, notice leave and a new kind of “weather and safety leave.”

It’s been more than two years and OPM hasn’t yet released regulations describing the terms of “administrative” or “investigative” leave, as created by Congress. But the agency did release regulations describing “weather and safety leave” back in April.

In general, the regulations allow OPM to grant “weather and safety leave” due to an “act of God:” a terrorist attack or other emergency condition that prevents employees from safely traveling to or performing work at the office or other work site.

But teleworkers are in a different boat. If you’re eligible and equipped to telework, your agency will generally expect you to work remotely instead of taking a snow day — or what’s more accurately described as weather or safety leave. Federal employees who aren’t eligible to telework can use weather and safety leave, as long as OPM has granted it.

“Agencies should continue to promote and incorporate telework into their agency emergency planning so that employees will be able to telework effectively during emergency situations, thereby allowing the federal government to maintain productivity and support their agency mission,” OPM said.

OPM’s most recent dismissal and closure guidance describes a wide variety of possible scenarios for teleworkers and non-teleworkers alike during emergency or weather-related situations.

Of course, there are always exceptions and changes to the norm depending on an employee’s home and child care situation and the circumstances of the weather event. Federal News Network has mapped out a few potential scenarios, and how you should respond to them according to OPM guidance, below.

Stacey’s agency announces that the agency is open with the option for “unscheduled telework or unscheduled leave." Stacey notifies her supervisor that she intends to perform unscheduled telework and starts to work at her normal start time.

Brian’s agency bars employees from performing telework when children are in the home without supervision by another adult. Since Brian cannot safely travel to the worksite and he cannot perform telework due to his agency’s policy, Brian’s agency may grant him weather and safety leave for the entire workday.

Anna’s agency permits employees under limited circumstances to telework when children are in the home without supervision by another adult only when a closure is announced. However, employees may only count those hours during which agency work is done. Time Anna spends providing care to her son may not be counted. Anna can telework in the morning for five hours but must take paid or unpaid leave or other time off to care for her son.

Jon leaves three hours early at 1:30 p.m. and gets home at 2:30 p.m. He completes his workday via telework and receives weather and safety leave for the time to commute home. If Jon chooses not to complete the workday once he gets home, he must request unscheduled leave or other paid time off for the remainder of the day (2:30-4:30 p.m.) or a combination of both leave and other paid time off and telework.

See a full roundup of potential scenarios here.

As always, federal employees in the Washington, D.C., area should look for an operating status announcement from OPM. These announcements apply to all employees working at agencies inside the Washington Capital beltway.

OPM advises federal employees from taking their own, sudden action during a weather event, because the agency itself works with local and regional officials to coordinate announcements based on traffic patterns, for example.

Employees working at agencies outside the Washington-area beltway should look for announcements from their own agencies. Many employees can also look for announcements from their federal executive boards (FEBs), which are located in 28 metropolitan areas across the United States. FEBs consult with the General Services Administration, Federal Protective Service, National Weather Service and local public safety officers to give agencies up-to-date information.

Graphics by Amelia Brust, Federal News Network digital editor

With 34 days on the books this year’s budget stalemate is on track to meet that number. It’s far exceeded the 1995-1996 shutdown to become the longest is history.

The 2013 shutdown also wasted an estimated $600 million in lost productivity from civilian furloughs at the Defense Department. Some feds are now not even getting liquidated damages from that shutdown, which the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled they were owed for untimely compensation of their work — in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act — because this shutdown is holding up payments.

And just as in 2013, OMB does not have an estimate for this shutdown’s cost to employee morale.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Maryland-based demographics and income research firm Sentier Research released a report attempting to calculate the lost wages of furloughed workers. The report is based on a random sub-sample of 833,000 full-time “federal government employees,” not including postal workers or active-duty members of the armed forces, counted in 2017, the most recent available data. Sentier’s Gordon Green said it was impossible to determine exactly how many people may have been called back to work without pay, however.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

As the partial government shutdown drags on and surpasses the longest lapse in history, agencies and their employees face a revolving door of new questions about the impact on their pay, benefits, taxes, retirement and leave banks.

The timing and length of this particular government shutdown has pushed agencies into unprecedented territory, and in some cases, it’s creating the need for answers to questions that haven’t been addressed before.

Federal News Network is soliciting your questions about your pay, benefits, retirement and other general topics during the government shutdown.

Direct your questions to the Federal News Network Facebook page or Twitter account, or via our website comments. We will do our best to answer as many as we can. We will also update this page as more information from the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management and Budget and individual agencies becomes available.

We will continually update this page as we receive more information and reader questions. New questions and answers will appear at the top of the page and will be indicated as additional FAQs as we receive them.

Updated 1/24: What happens to my federal dental and vision insurance?

Coverage under the Federal Federal Employees Dental and Vision Program (FEDVIP) will continue during the shutdown.

OPM recently extended the number of consecutive pay periods enrollees in FEDVIP would have to miss before they received bills for missing premiums from two to three.

If the shutdown continues for three consecutive pay periods, BENEFEDS will begin to directly bill enrollees for premium payments. FEDVIP participants must pay those bills if they want their coverage to continue.

If the shutdown lasts for less than three consecutive pay periods, premiums will accumulate and will be withheld later until employees go back to work.

See OPM’s updated pay and benefits guide here.

Updated 1/24: Can I take a sick day or any other time off during the shutdown?

Federal News Network has received many questions about leave during this government shutdown, and OPM has finally weighed in on the topic.

The answer is yes. Excepted employees have two options to take annual or sick leave during the government shutdown without penalty.

Employees who are working without pay can request and take approved leave as they normally would as if the government shutdown wasn’t going on, OPM said in a Jan. 23 memo. Excepted employees will be charged for the time in their personal leave banks after the fact, and they won’t be paid for those hours until the government shutdown ends.

Excepted employees can also take approved leave and accept “default furlough status” for the hours or days in which they take leave. Employees who take off and accept “furlough status” will be paid for the time after the fact, and they won’t be charged leave.

OPM acknowledged the second option is likely more favorable for excepted employees.

At the same time, excepted employees who fail to show up for work during the government shutdown and don’t receive approval from their supervisors for taking time off will be considered “absent without leave,” otherwise known as AWOL, for the duration of the absence, according to OPM.

“The employee’s unauthorized absence should be coded in payroll as AWOL,” OPM wrote in a Jan. 18 memo. “Agencies may elect to provide the employee a written notification about his or her AWOL status at the time of the AWOL but this can vary by agency. The agency may use its discretion, based on the facts and circumstances of the employee’s situation, to apply appropriate consequences based on the AWOL status.”

Updated 1/24: Can excepted employees apply for unemployment?

Excepted employees who are working for their agencies on a full time basis are generally not eligible for unemployment benefits during the government shutdown, according to a Jan. 18 memo from OPM.

However, excepted employees who work on an intermittent basis — seasonal, part time work — may apply for unemployment. Employees should apply for these benefits in the state where they work, unless their last official duty station was not within one of the 50 U.S. states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands. If this is the case, furloughed or intermittent excepted employees should file for unemployment in the state or U.S. territory where they currently live, according to OPM.

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) on Jan. 24 introduced new legislation that would allow excepted employees working without pay to file for unemployment.

Some states, including California, Colorado, Vermont and D.C., have decided on their own to approve unemployment eligibility for excepted employees, according to Brown. His bill would extend eligibility to essential employees working at all states.

The bill has support from Virginia Reps. Don Beyer, Elaine Luria and Jennifer Wexton, along with Maryland Reps. David Trone and Jamie Raskin, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

New 1/21: If I am potentially eligible for unemployment benefits during the shutdown, do I need to prove that I’m looking for other work?

Employees’ eligibility for unemployment benefits varies by state. Each state has its own eligibility requirements to participate in the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees program. 

To receive benefits, many states may require that applicants demonstrate they’re actively looking for other employment. Some states may waive this eligibility requirement. OPM advises federal employees check with their own states to learn about their own program’s eligibility requirements.

See a state-by-state reference guidance for unemployment benefits here.

The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia have indicated they’ll waive the requirement for federal employees to show they’re looking for other work in order to receive unemployment benefits, OPM said.

Federal employees can use a variety of forms of documentation to apply for unemployment in their states, according to OPM. Employees who don’t have access to their most recent SF-50 while furloughed can also use a leave and earning statement or a W-2.

Federal employees need to show documentation to begin a claim because agencies do not report wages to individual states like most other employers do, OPM said.

Scroll further in this story for more information on unemployment benefits during the government shutdown.

New 1/21: Can I get a reimbursement for my transit benefits if I’m working during the shutdown?

Yes.

Agencies impacted by the government shutdown may not have the funds to pay their employees — even excepted employees who are still working during the lapse in appropriations — the transit benefits they would typically earn.

Once the government shutdown ends, excepted employees can submit a SF Form 1164 reimbursable claim with their agency’s transit benefit point of contact, according to OPM.

Agencies should develop a process for handling these claims from excepted employees awaiting transit benefits, OPM said.

Updated 1/18: If I retired during the shutdown, am I actually retired?

Yes, federal employees who submitted their retirement application to their agencies before the shutdown began with an effective date during the shutdown, are retired.

Whether their paperwork has been processed, however, is a different story, and it depends on whether the staff at your agency’s payroll office is furloughed. If they are, processing of your retirement could be delayed.

Employees who retired during the shutdown won’t need to return to work when the shutdown ends, according to the National Active and Retired Federal Employee Association (NARFE). They are retired, even if their agencies or OPM haven’t finished processing their paperwork.

New retirees should receive their first annuity payments about two-to-four weeks after OPM has received all materials it needs to accurately adjudicate and process an employee’s retirement, NARFE said.

Updated 1/18: Can I retire during the government shutdown?

It may be more difficult for employees to retire during the government shutdown who haven’t yet submitted any paperwork to their agencies. Again, some agencies may have staff working during the shutdown who can process retirement applications. Some may not.

OPM Retirement Services is still working during the government shutdown. But it can’t process your retirement application until your agency has completed its part of the process.

In addition, employees will need to return federal property, including their personal identity verification (PIV) card, back to their agencies.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, has a specific message on its website describing how employees can separate from the agency. HUD instructs employees to email specific contacts for directions.

Updated 1/17: Will I receive my previously-scheduled GS step increase?

Extended furloughs, like this one, will likely impact the timing of General Schedule step increases that were already approved prior to the shutdown, according to OPM guidance.

Agencies can’t, however, deny or delay step increases because of a lack of funds.

After past shutdowns, OPM advised agencies to make a within-grade step increase effective on the day the increase was originally due. Therefore, if you were scheduled to receive a within-grade increase on Jan. 5, as an example, your retroactive back pay would reflect the increase as of Jan. 5.

Will I get paid?

Yes. President Donald Trump signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act into law on Jan. 16. It ensures that both furloughed and excepted federal employees receive back pay after the government shutdown ends. It also specifies that federal payroll providers begin to process checks as soon as the lapse in appropriations ends, regardless of the next scheduled pay date.

By law, federal employees can’t receive any pay for work done during a government shutdown until the lapse in appropriations ends.

Excepted employees who are required to work during a shutdown will eventually get paid, but not until after the shutdown ends. Generally speaking, non-excepted employees who are furloughed aren’t guaranteed pay unless Congress and the President have specifically authorized it. 

As mentioned earlier, the President has already authorized back pay for federal employees after this shutdown ends.

Federal contractors, however, are in a different boat. Congress has no real mechanism to ensure the federal contracting community gets paid during a government shutdown. Individual companies can decide to pay their contractor-employees when the shutdown ends, but again, there’s no guarantee.

A group of Senate Democrats has introduced legislation that would ensure low-wage federal contractors receive back pay during this shutdown. But no similar legislation has ever cleared Congress before.

When will I get paid?

At this point, a definitive or ballpark estimate is tough to approximate. The legislation that Trump signed into law specifies that payroll providers work as quickly as possible to send out checks, regardless of the next scheduled pay period.

OPM has issued more specific guidance on this question in the days following past government shutdowns. The agency will likely provide more details soon after the current lapse ends.

How will I receive my back pay?

We won’t know for sure until the shutdown ends and OPM issues more detailed guidance.

But after the 16-day government shutdown in 2013, most federal employees received back pay as a lump sum. Federal employee unions expect that whenever this shutdown ends, furloughed and excepted employees would receive a lump sum payment, rather than a series of installments.

Again, the back pay legislation that Trump signed on Jan. 16 instructs payroll providers to process checks as quickly as possible, regardless of the next scheduled pay period.

Is my retroactive pay considered 2018 or 2019 taxable income?

OPM will likely issue specific guidance with more detail after the lapse in appropriations ends. But history can give us an indication of what that guidance will likely say.

According to OPM guidance issued after the 1995-1996 government shutdown, excepted and furloughed federal employees were to be compensated “as though they had performed work for the agency during all periods of regularly scheduled duty,” the agency said. “Therefore, employees are entitled to receive their rate of basic pay for all periods of time during which they would have been in a pay status but for the lapse in appropriations.”

This guidance suggests that for employees who worked without pay or were furloughed on days in 2018, back pay for those days would count as 2018 taxable income. The same mentality, in theory, may apply for work or furlough days in 2019.

Though the 1995-1996 government shutdown was the second-longest lapse in history, agencies reopened on Jan. 6, leaving payroll providers enough time to issue W-2s denoting an employee’s entire income for 1995.

But without a clear end in sight to this current government shutdown, we can’t say for sure that payroll providers will be able to provide a complete picture of an employee’s 2018 income in time for the release of his or her W-2.

Federal News Network will update this response when more information becomes available.

What happens to my use-or-lose leave?

OPM has since clarified: Agencies should restore any annual leave their employees lost at the end of 2018 due to the government shutdown.

Because all paid leave is canceled during a government shutdown, employees who had scheduled to take annual leave during the holidays had to forfeit the time.

But these circumstances put some employees in a tricky situation. Federal employees generally can carry some leave with them from year to year, as long as it doesn’t exceed the annual leave ceiling. But many employees specifically save their “use-or-lose” leave for the end of the year during the holidays.

For some, the government shutdown meant certain excepted employees not only had to cancel their leave and come into work but also exceed the annual leave ceiling.

The 2018 leave year ended on Jan. 5, 2019 for employees on the standard biweekly pay period cycle. Agencies can restore lost-leave scheduled before Jan. 5, as long as employees had requested to take that leave in writing before Nov. 24, 2018, according to OPM.

As long as this partial government shutdown continues, federal employees can’t substitute annual leave for a furlough. The Antideficiency Act, which essentially bars government from spending money it doesn’t have, prohibits employees from taking paid time off.

Can I still accrue annual or sick leave?

Furloughed employees won’t accrue annual and sick leave during a shutdown once they’ve reached non-pay status for 80 hours, according to OPM guidance. Congress and the President have authorized a retroactive accrual of leave in the Jan. 16 back pay bill.

Excepted employees will continue to accrue leave, but again, workers can’t take it until the shutdown ends.

Can I file for unemployment?

Furloughed federal employees are eligible to apply for unemployment benefits, but excepted employees working on a full-time basis generally aren’t eligible, according to OPM.

Furloughed employees, however, will be required to pay back any unemployment benefits they received once the shutdown ends and federal payroll providers begin to process retroactive paychecks.

Employees’ eligibility for unemployment varies by state. In most circumstances, the state where an employee’s official duty station is located is the state that will determine a worker’s unemployment eligibility in the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees Program. State unemployment insurance agencies administer this program on behalf of the federal government.

Federal employees who are eligible can apply for unemployment benefits on or after the first day of their furlough.

To file an unemployment claim, federal employees should first contact the state where they work to get started, OPM said. Some states may require employees to wait a week after filing a claim before they receive a payment. In general, most states will issue benefits within 14-to-21 days after an employee filed a claim, according to OPM.

Each state has different requirements that federal employees must meet first to be eligible.

Most states pay a maximum of 26 weeks of regular benefits, according to OPM, but the benefits themselves vary depending on location.

Find more information on unemployment benefits from OPM here. See a state-by-state reference guidance for unemployment benefits here.

The General Services Administration has a checklist of documents that furloughed federal employees should find before applying for unemployment benefits.

Will W-2s be delayed?

A spokesman for the Agriculture Department said the National Finance Center will begin to send out W-2s to employees by Jan. 25. The mailing process will continue through Jan. 31.

NFC will process and distribute some 705,000 W-2s, according to a message on the USDA website. Most will be available on employee personal pages near the end of January, but about 9,000 of them will be suspended from the electronic site, according to USDA. NFC will slowly release those W-2s from suspense and will mail and issue them electronically.

Any NFC client who hasn’t received a W-2 by Feb. 4 should contact the NFC reporting center.

The General Services Administration Payroll Service Branch will make W-2s available for their clients no later than Jan. 31, 2019, according to GSA.

The Interior Business Center didn’t immediately respond to questions about the status of W-2s during the government shutdown.

What happens to my federal health insurance?

Your coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) will continue during the government shutdown. Enrollment in FEHBP continues for up to one year in non-pay status.

Your contributions toward your health premiums will accumulate. They’ll be withheld until the government reopens and impacted employees receive back pay.

The government will continue to make its FEHBP contributions even during this shutdown, because OPM uses the Federal Employees Health Benefits Fund to make payments.

For participants who made changes to their health insurance during open season, those changes should have gone into effect Jan. 1 regardless of the current shutdown.

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) Association has suggested FEHBP participants check with their new carriers to make sure they’re covered.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of the most popular insurance options for participants in the FEHBP, reminded members their coverage will continue during the government shutdown.

“The BCBS Federal Employee Program continues to process claims and reimburse doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers,” William Breskin, senior vice president of government programs for BCBS Association, said Jan. 18 in a statement. “Eligible FEP members can also contact their local Blue Cross and Blue Shield company if they have a qualifying life event, such as the birth of a baby, that allows them to change their coverage or add eligible individuals to their policy.”

New enrollments or changes to enrollment because of a qualifying life event generally won’t go into effect until an employees returns to pay status. The birth or addition of a child is the exception, according to OPM.

What about group life insurance and long term care insurance?

Coverage under the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) continues for up to 12 months in non-pay status. FEGLI only collects premiums for pay periods when enrollees receive pay.

Coverage under the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program continues during the shutdown. But if Long-Term Care Partners doesn’t receive premiums for three consecutive pay periods, it will begin to directly bill participants.

…And my flexible spending account?

Payroll deductions to your flexible spending account (FSAFEDS) will stop when you don’t receive a paycheck. You’re still enrolled in FSAFEDS, but you can’t be reimbursed for eligible health care claims until you return to pay-status.

How is my retirement impacted?

Employees impacted by the shutdown aren’t making contributions toward their retirement because they’re not getting paid.

The shutdown won’t have an impact on an employee’s retirement-creditable service or high-3 average pay unless the lapse lasts for more than six months, according to OPM.

Annuity payments for current retirees will continue. A significant share of the operations of the Office of Personnel Management, including the office that processes retirement benefits, is funded through sources other than appropriations. The annuities themselves are also paid from trust funds that do not depend on annual spending bills.

Military retirees of the U.S. Coast Guard, however, are in a different position. If the government shutdown continues through the month of January, the service will not have funds to disburse February retirement checks to retired Coast Guard members.

Unlike other federal agencies and branches of the armed services, the Coast Guard uses a pay-as-you-go appropriation to fund military retiree payments.

What should I do to suspend TSP loan payments?

Typically, the Thrift Savings Plan requires agencies and military services to send documentation that an employee has entered “non-pay” status in order to suspend loan payments and prevent those loans from going into default.

During this shutdown, the TSP isn’t requiring a notice.

“The TSP does not need documentation of your furlough at this time,” according to a message on the plan’s website. “If your loan payments were up to date prior to the furlough, missing one or two payments will not cause your loan to be in default.”

Can I make allotments from pay?

Federal employees can’t make allotments during the shutdown because they’re not getting paid. OPM suggests employees impacted by the shutdown review allotments and decide whether they’ll need to make alternative arrangements to make loan or other payments.

The government shutdown has impacted TRICARE health plans and dental program allotments made on or after Jan. 1, 2019, the Coast Guard said.

TRICARE can’t process these payments from retirees of the Coast Guard, U.S. Public Health Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration commissioned corps.

No one will disenrolled for non-payment, the Coast Guard said. TRICARE will continue to process claims and coverage will continue during the shutdown.

Forty years ago, there was no such thing as a government shutdown.

When appropriations lapsed, agencies halted new business but continued with their existing responsibilities, confident that Congress would eventually fund them. Depending on the length of the shutdown, federal employees might have gotten paid late, and GI Bill checks and housing subsidies may have been delayed. But most business continued.

That all changed in 1980, when the then-attorney general revisited a 100-year-old law and decided agencies should take lapses in appropriations far more seriously.

So what happened?

Successor administrations took that opinion so seriously that they have shut down the government at least 10 times since. The impact from each one has varied, but the shutdowns have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and prompted financial uncertainty and hardship for hundreds of thousands of federal employees working or furloughed without pay.

Federal employees have experienced three shutdowns in 2018 alone, and at 23 days and counting, the current partial lapse in appropriations is the longest ever.

A March 1981 report from the Government Accountability Office, then known as the General Accounting Office, describes — at times with tragic irony — how “incomprehensible, inconceivable and unthinkable” a government shutdown would be to federal agencies and their employees. The report also included several options Congress could take to ensure a genuine shutdown would never occur.

But now, due to congressional inaction, a nearly 40-year-old legal interpretation and years of precedent, they’re the norm.

The Antideficiency Act

In 1980, the federal government was looking at another lapse in appropriations at the beginning of fiscal 1981. In the buildup to this expected funding gap, President Jimmy Carter asked then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti to look into whether a law passed in 1884 permitted federal employees to work without appropriations.

That law was the Antideficiency Act, originally passed to prevent federal agencies from spending more money than Congress appropriated, and imposing criminal penalties on any federal employee, officer or executive who violated this.

Civiletti determined that any federal agencies that continued operations and incurred obligations after appropriations lapsed, including paying employees, would be in violation of the Antideficiency Act, and that the Department of Justice would be obligated to prosecute.

This overruled decades of precedent. Before 1980, it was generally assumed that Congress’ failure to pass appropriations on time did not indicate that it had intended agencies to cease operations. This assumption was supported by the fact that Congress usually included language in continuing resolutions that retroactively covered obligations incurred during funding lapses.

It was this confidence in Congress’ intent that had allowed agencies to continue business in spite of the Antideficiency Act. Even GAO agreed with this assessment when asked by Congress.

“We do not believe that the Congress intends the federal agencies be closed during periods of expired appropriations,” said then-Comptroller General Elmer Staats.

But with the new opinion from the attorney general, all that changed.

Planning for the first shutdown

“Never before had heads of agencies been required to seriously plan the tasks and identify the staff that would be needed to begin closing down an agency’s activities,” the report said. “Faced with a drastic change in the status quo, federal officials felt compelled to take action to indicate compliance with the Act, or at least to avoid giving the appearance that they were in violation of it.”

The problem was that nobody knew what action to take. The Office of Management and Budget didn’t issue guidance until the end of August 1980, a little more than a month before funding would run out. But that guidance was seen by some agency officials as contradictory and confusing, and some agencies even disregarded parts of it that didn’t fit their draft plans. Further muddying the issue, OMB and Justice did not answer questions agency officials submitted for clarification.

GAO interviewed 18 agencies after the fact about their shutdown plans. Of those, 13 made plans of varying degree of detail. Some plans specified essential functions, personnel, how to shut down and how long it would take. The other five were less detailed, some intending to begin planning on the first day of lapsed appropriations.

In fact, the departments of Defense and State both assumed that appropriations would be passed on time, and if not, the activities of their departments would continue as normal due to national security considerations.

GAO’s report points to a general atmosphere of disbelief among officials that contributed to the lack of preparation.

“All officials we interviewed told us that their agency’s plans were not final or official because they had not been reviewed or approved by top managers,” the report said. “When we asked about the status of the planning process, several officials said that while plans were well underway in late September, they were in no hurry to complete them because they hoped that an appropriations gap would not occur.”

The report also mentions that officials may have delayed because “if the plans had been deemed official, agency heads might have been expected to implement them.”

In the end, Congress passed a continuing resolution and Carter signed it on Oct. 1, 1980, avoiding what almost became the first government shutdown. Technically, appropriations lapsed for 16 hours, but GAO said it couldn’t find any agencies that conducted business in any way outside the norm.

Have shutdowns changed?

Much has changed in the way of government shutdowns since 1980.

Today, each agency maintains and updates a shutdown contingency plan, which OMB publishes on its website. There are now general procedures that agencies follow for determining which employees are “excepted” or “non-excepted” and for communicating those determinations to their workforces.

The concept of a government shutdown as we know it today stemmed from the approach that the Clinton administration took during the 1995-1996 lapse in appropriations, said Frank Reeder, who served at OMB in various roles from 1970-1990.

“Shutdowns hadn’t been taken seriously in the sense that anybody tried to, if you will, make them ‘hard’ shutdowns — that is, enforce the letter of the Civiletti opinion. Agencies tended to take a very liberal view of persons who could be exempted from the shutdown,” Reeder said. “Shutdowns tended to be a fairly ‘soft’ event, fairly brief. In [1995], the Clinton administration made a decision that we were going to enforce the letter of the Civiletti opinion.”

Strict compliance with the 1980 Antideficiency Act interpretation was the “order of the day,” Reeder said, and OMB became the “strict enforcer.” John Koskinen, then OMB’s deputy director for management, became anecdotally known as the “shutdown czar.”

The Obama and Trump administrations since have followed a similar mentality: Only those employees and activities deemed “essential” by their agencies to protect life and property would continue to work. Everyone else would go home and wait for Congress and the White House to reach a compromise on a spending deal.

Does it have to be this way?

But perhaps this exercise of shutting down agencies, furloughing some and requiring others to work without pay is simply that — a political exercise that’s open to judgment and analysis.

After all, the Civiletti opinion of the Antideficiency Act is an interpretation. Perhaps there’s more room for more judgement and analysis — or at least a more liberal view of what has since become precedent since the 1980 decision.

The Trump administration does see more room for interpretation. A senior administration official said it’s actively working with agencies to discover exceptions to the Antideficiency Act.

“My marching orders from [OMB acting Director] Russ Vought and Mick Mulvaney, [White House chief of staff] and up to the President was, make this as painless as possible, consistent with the law,” a senior administration official said in an interview last week with Federal News Network. “There is the law, and there are longstanding exceptions to the law. There are judgment calls with those exceptions. We spent a lot of time on it with the agency’s counsel, with OMB lawyers, with Department of Justice lawyers, to make sure that — with our marching orders to make this as painless as possible — we are being consistent with the law.”

The IRS’ decision to pay tax refunds and the Agriculture Department’s decision to issue supplemental nutrition benefits are examples of the administration’s approach.

And the Trump administration — as well as the Obama and Clinton administrations that came before it — is trying to balance and win a political argument. On one hand, administrations want to take the lapse in appropriations seriously, but on the other, they don’t want to inflict political damage on themselves, Reeder said.

“A strict interpretation of the Civiletti opinion would say you don’t need any IRS people on board, period, except perhaps to make sure that the doors are locked,” Reeder said. “At the same time, the backlash if we get much further down the road and [with] folks who are expecting tax refunds will be huge. We’re in what is largely a political game.”

GAO’s ideas

Interpretations aside, GAO has also suggested a number of ways Congress could avoid future government shutdowns altogether.

For example, Congress could permanently authorize agencies to incur obligations for continued operations. This was the suggestion that earned GAO’s endorsement. The idea is that agencies would continue to function during a lapse in appropriations, but would still be unable to issue payments. The obligations incurred during the lapse would be paid for when appropriations are enacted.

This would alleviate the need to shut down agencies’ operations, or even create shutdown plans. It would essentially codify the pre-1980 assumption that, despite the lapse in appropriations, Congress could not have intended the government to actually shut down. And it works within the Antideficiency Act, which allows for obligations “authorized by law.”

This also ticks all the boxes of GAO’s criteria for a good shutdown plan. It’s long-term, and would automatically apply during a funding gap. Congress keeps control of appropriations, as agencies can’t actually pay out any money unless Congress appropriates it. It covers all agencies, and all activities. And it’s politically neutral, favoring no party or ideology.

There are downsides to this idea, however. If agencies can incur obligations but aren’t allowed to distribute any funds, that means federal employees don’t get paid until the appropriations pass. It also means contractors don’t get paid and benefits like GI Bill payments won’t get disbursed.

It’s worth noting that at the time of the report, GAO actually listed this as an advantage, assuming pressure from these groups would incentivize Congress to curtail politically-sensitive debate and compromise on legislation.

Alternately, each House could pass rules requiring every appropriations bill to include language authorizing agencies to incur obligations during a funding gap. This would have the same effect as above, but GAO warned it could invite legal challenges by including substantial legislation in appropriations bills, something generally frowned upon.

GAO also suggested that Congress could amend the Antideficiency Act itself to allow agencies to incur obligations. This would essentially have the same effect as the first suggestion, and also allows some flexibility for agencies to potentially pay off those obligations during the funding gap, up to a certain specified level.

But GAO warned that tampering with the act could weaken what is the fundamental statute that prevents agencies from spending money they don’t have. GAO said it has stood the test of time, and since working within the statute is just as easy as amending it, the office recommended against this avenue.

A permanent continuing resolution, which would automatically take effect when appropriations lapse and set limits to the average level of expenditures for the previous year could also accomplish these goals, though this would also have to provide for retroactive payments of any expenditures not authorized in the previous fiscal year.

Noting that, at the time, riders — usually politically volatile add-ons — were the main cause of lapsed appropriations, GAO said that Congress could limit or forbid riders on appropriations bills, or require a two-thirds vote to include them. The idea is that this would limit ideological debates from holding up appropriations, and reduce the number of funding gaps.

But GAO said Congress would likely resist this measure, which would not apply to every funding lapse, and would not be politically neutral.

GAO also considered several bills in the 96th Congress that would have permanently provided pay for government employees, both civilian and military, during lapsed appropriations. Most of them lacked comprehensiveness, GAO said, and the one bill that provided permanent authority to continue salaries deprives Congress of short-term control over appropriations. However, Congress could place ceilings on these appropriations, GAO said, in order to maintain long-term control.

Congress has in recent years attempted to debate and consider some of these ideas.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has advocated for automatic continuing resolutions and introduced the Government Shutdown Prevention Act in the previous Congress.

Paul’s bill went nowhere in the Senate, but other senators have picked up on the concept as the current partial shutdown extends past three weeks.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has introduced the End Government Shutdowns Act, a bill that would also provide for automatic continuing resolutions. It has eight Republican co-sponsors.

The Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, which Congress formed as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, was supposed to draft legislative language that would “significantly reform the budget and appropriations process.” Committee members again suggested the concept of implementing automatic continuing resolutions or requiring that lawmakers stay in Washington until spending bills had been finalized and voted out of Congress.

But committee members couldn’t agree and ultimately settled on recommendations that simply reiterate existing congressional practices, such as drafting budget resolutions two years at a time.

And perhaps ironically, congressional leadership said Capitol Hill wouldn’t have time to consider the select committee’s budget reform recommendations in the 115th Congress. The House and Senate had too much appropriations work to finish before funding ran dry at the end of 2018, congressional leaders said.

So the committee’s recommendations went nowhere.

Federal employees can, in most circumstances, file for unemployment benefits during a government shutdown. The Office of Personnel Management has recently updated information on how federal workers can file for unemployment insurance during the partial government shutdown.

Employees’ eligibility for unemployment varies by state. In most circumstances, the state where an employee’s official duty station is located is the state that will determine a worker’s unemployment eligibility in the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees Program. State unemployment insurance agencies administer this program on behalf of the federal government.

Federal employees who are eligible can apply for unemployment benefits on or after the first day of their furlough.

To file an unemployment claim, federal employees should first contact the state where they work to get started, OPM said. Some states may require employees to wait a week after filing a claim before they receive a payment. In general, most states will issue benefits within 14-to-21 days after an employee filed a claim, according to OPM.

Each state has different requirements that federal employees must meet first to unemployment eligibility.

Most states pay a maximum of 26 weeks of regular benefits, according to OPM, but the benefits themselves vary depending on location.

For employees who work in the District of Columbia, D.C. will pay up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Benefits will range from $50-to-$425 a week, according to this reference table of state unemployment insurance laws and information.

The situation is different in Virginia, which will pay unemployment benefits for 12-to-26 weeks. Benefits will range from $60-to-$378 a week.

In Maryland, benefits will be paid for up to 26 weeks and will range from $50-to-$430 a week.

Of course, more than 80 percent of the federal workforce works and lives outside of the Washington metropolitan area. California, which is home to the highest number of federal employees in the country, will pay benefits for 14-to-26 weeks. Weekly payments will range from $40-to-$450.

For a full list of unemployment laws in each state, visit this quick reference.

Federal agencies themselves get billed on a quarterly basis for unemployment compensation benefits paid out to their employees. The Labor Department is responsible for sending unemployment compensation bills to each agency based on information from individual state insurance agencies.

These state insurance agencies will notify federal agencies when an employee has filed an unemployment claim. Federal agencies have up to 12 days to respond, according to OPM.

Securing unemployment insurance could potentially alleviate the “temporary shock” that a government shutdown can have on furloughed federal employees and their finances.

Employees who received late paychecks during past government shutdowns saw a significant and sudden impact on their checking and savings accounts, according to a 2015 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The bureau study found the median federal worker had just enough assets to cover eight days of average spending before the 2013 shutdown. Before payday, the median federal employee had enough assets for five days of average spending during the 16-day shutdown.

What happens when the shutdown ends?

Policies vary based on individual states, but most states won’t allow unemployment beneficiaries to simply cancel their claims if the shutdown ends and their claim was uphold and benefits were issued.

Whenever the partial government shutdown ends, federal employees will be required to repay unemployment benefits they received whenever they get back pay for the time spent during the lapse in appropriations.

This scenario is highly likely. Congress has, in fact, passed legislation that grants employees retroactive pay for the time they spent on furlough during past government shutdowns, and lawmakers will likely clear similar legislation again. The Senate has already passed such legislation for this current partial shutdown, but the House has yet to act.

“The state [unemployment insurance] agency determines whether or not an overpayment exists and, generally, the recovery of the overpayment is a matter for state action under its law,” OPM guidance reads. “However, some state UI laws require the employer to recover such overpayment.”

Again, not all federal employees will be impacted if part of the government closes at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 22. Generally, employees and contractors at the Defense Department and Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services will not be impacted by Friday’s outcome.

HHS employees, however, should check with their agency for more details. Employees who work for programs that fall under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, which has already been passed and signed into law by the President, will not be affected by a partial government shutdown. HHS employees that fall under agriculture and interior appropriations, however, may be impacted.

Many agencies have updated their shutdown contingency plans in the last few days. Find your agency’s plan here.

Some agencies are beginning to inform employees of the status — either “excepted” or “non-excepted” — and are giving them individual guidance for the coming days.

OPM has provided more clarity about the potential lapse in appropriations and its impact on pay, leave and holiday time.

Will I get paid?

By law, federal employees can’t receive any pay for work done during a government shutdown until the lapse in appropriations ends.

Excepted employees who are required to work during a shutdown will eventually get paid, but not until after the shutdown ends. Non-excepted employees who are furloughed aren’t guaranteed pay, but they have received it after shutdowns in the recent past.

Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Rob Wittman (R-Va.) have introduced the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act, which, if passed and signed into law, would give furloughed workers back pay for the duration of the partial shutdown.

Will I get my next paycheck on time?

You should. Because Saturday, Dec. 22 is the last day of the most recent biweekly pay period, employees should receive a paycheck for the past two weeks at the usual time, OPM said. Payroll providers may finalize and process paychecks as an orderly shutdown activity, but there’s a good chance that checks may not include pay for any work done on Saturday, Dec. 22.

What about the holidays?

In most recent government shutdowns, non-excepted employees are expected to come to work on their next scheduled day in the office to receive a furlough notice and conduct closeout activities.

With the holidays, however, OPM is encouraging agencies to be lenient.

“Under this unique timing of the lapse in appropriations, agencies should take into consideration an employee’s previously scheduled leave, [alternative work schedule] day off, or holiday(s) that takes place during the furlough period and allow the employee to be furloughed during the period the employee had been scheduled to take leave — unless the agency determines there is a need for the employee to report to work to perform excepted activities,” OPM said.

Employees can perform shutdown activities prior to a potential partial shutdown as precaution.

“If an employee was scheduled to be on leave on the workdays immediately after the lapse commences, the employee is not required to report to duty to perform orderly shutdown activities on a scheduled leave day, even though the leave has been canceled,” OPM said. “An agency may allow such an employee to perform required orderly shutdown activities (if any, including receipt of a furlough notice) on the first workday on which the employee had been scheduled to return to duty.”

Some agencies are allowing their employees to accept furlough notices via email, meaning they wouldn’t need to come into the office to accept them.

Excepted employees are in a slightly different situation. Generally, excepted employees are expected to come work, but they can take an unpaid absence during the days they were previously scheduled to take leave, like during the week of Dec. 23, for example. If they do choose to take an absence during that time, excepted employees would be put in “furlough” status for those days, meaning they’re not guaranteed pay for the time off.

Remember, Monday, Dec. 24 is now considered a federal holiday for Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day on Dec. 25 is also a holiday. This means employees, if they’re expected to come in at all, wouldn’t need to return to their work sites until the next work day following a lapse in appropriation. For employees who work weekends, this could be Dec. 22 or 23. But for most who work Monday-Friday schedules, this day isn’t until Dec. 26.

What happens to my vacation time?

All scheduled paid leave and paid holiday time off are technically canceled for employees impacted by the shutdown, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re expected to come to work.

Again, excepted employees are expected to work and may earn holiday premium pay for the time spent in the office, but they won’t receive that pay until after the partial government shutdown ends.

If you’re scheduled to take use-or-lose annual leave at the end of the month or early January, you may have a few options, depending on the circumstances.

Federal employees who follow a biweekly pay period schedule may risk having their leave balances exceed the annual carry-over limit due to the partial government shutdown.

“Such canceled leave may be restored to the employee’s credit following agency procedures, since the lapse is considered an exigency of the public business,” OPM said. “However, leave that had previously been restored may not be restored even if scheduled use of the previously restored leave is canceled due to the lapse.”

This story will be updated as more information and clarification becomes available. 

As part of its annual World Investor Week, the Securities and Exchange Commission partnered with the TSP on Tuesday to answer questions from federal employees who may retire or leave federal service in the near future.

Experts from the TSP and the SEC took a variety of questions from federal employees but spent the bulk of the two-hour training event covering the upcoming changes to the plan’s withdrawal options.

The SEC said it had more than 5,000 people watching the live webinar, in addition to the 100 or so people in its auditorium in person on Tuesday afternoon. The agency is planning to archive the seminar, which is expected to post on its website by Friday.

In the meantime, here are five things you should know about the new TSP withdrawal options.

When will the new TSP withdrawal options be available?

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), the agency that administers the TSP, expects the new options will be available by September 2019.

The TSP Modernization Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last November, gives the FRTIB up to two years to implement the new changes.

The FRTIB has been writing regulations and preparing new forms to reflect the array of new options, since last September, before the TSP Modernization Act became law.

So what are the new withdrawal options?

Under the new system, all TSP participants will be able to take one withdrawal every 30 days.

Participants who are still in federal service at age 59½ or older will be able to take up to four partial withdrawals from the TSP during a given calendar year. The 30-day limit still applies, however, so participants can’t take four partial withdrawals during the span of two months, for example.

Those who have left federal service will have no other limitations beyond the 30-day requirement to make partial withdrawals from the TSP.

Currently, in-service TSP participants can make only one partial withdrawal at age 59½ or older. Other participants who have left government can only make one partial post-separation withdrawal — either a lump-sum payment, a series of monthly payments or annuity payment — under current law by age 70½.

Under the new options, TSP participants who have left federal service can take monthly, quarterly or annual installment payments as part of a post-separation withdrawal. Applicable participants can make changes to these payments, which they can stop and restart at any time, at any point during the year. Currently, participants can only make changes to their installment payments during open season, which typically runs from early October to mid-December.

Participants can also request partial withdrawals while receiving installment payments.

Currently, participants who have left federal service must make a full withdrawal by age 70½, where they’ll either set up monthly installments, an annuity or a lump sum. If they don’t decide how and when they’ll fully withdraw from the TSP,  the FRTIB “abandons” the account.

Moving forward, the FRTIB plans to eliminate the deadline to make a full withdrawal election. Instead, the agency will pay the remaining difference of a participant’s TSP account through required minimum distributions (RMDs) to those who have reached age 70½ and haven’t determined how they’d like to withdraw the remaining funds in their accounts.

In the future, these participants will receive notices from the TSP reminding them that they haven’t made a full withdrawal election. These participants would receive several reminders throughout the year to take the required minimum distributions (RMDs), which the Internal Revenue Code determines every year.

Will I have more options to determine where my payments come from?

Yes.

Currently, participants receive withdrawal payments proportionally from their traditional and Roth balances.

In the future, participants will be able to draw from either their traditional or Roth balances. They can also continue to tap into the “pro-rata” traditional/Roth mix.

Can I use new TSP withdrawal options if I’m planning retire before September 2019?

Yes.

Even though the FRTIB is preparing a slate of new withdrawals for September 2019, it’s not getting rid of any of the options TSP participants currently have, said Randy Urban, a TSP supervisory training and liaison specialist with the agency.

TSP participants won’t be “grandfathered in” to the existing withdrawal structure, he added. Anyone who retires before the new options become available can make a change to their post-separation payment structure or amount, Urban said.

Will the TSP withdrawal forms change?

The TSP will have some new withdrawal forms. Others will be tweaked slightly to reflect changes to the new system, Urban said.

Regardless, separated participants shouldn’t submit a withdrawal form until they’ve officially left federal service, the TSP said.

Married participants should find and print their withdrawal forms from the TSP website. In most situations, the TSP will require these participants to provide notarized signatures from their partners on the form itself.

Separated participants who want to make a change to their monthly payments, again, will need to include a signature from a spouse, Urban said.

In April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a major utilizer of polygraphs, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security it was evaluating the results of a six-month alternative polygraph pilot for screening new hires. And this fall, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will launch a competition to find new standards for assessing credibility.

Alexis Jeannotte, program manager for the Credibility Assessment Standardized Evaluation (CASE) Challenge, said the goal was to create a “ruler” against which to measure the efficacy of techniques, including the polygraph. IARPA wrote in its announcement of the CASE Challenge that the polygraph has not undergone significant changes in nearly 50 years.

“We need these protocols to evaluate how good these technologies are,” she said.

IARPA hopes that the winning submissions can get government, academics and industry on the same page when evaluating the questions or technology used to judge a person’s credibility.

Why do agencies use polygraphs?

Agencies may require polygraph exams for applicants to positions with certain levels of security clearance, or to renew security clearances. Most agencies who administer them are within the Defense Department and Intelligence Community.

Law enforcement, courts, the scientific community and the IC debate the reliability of polygraphs for gaining truthful answers. But due to several high-profile national security incidents such as Edward Snowden’s leaks of National Security Agency intelligence in 2013, agencies are under pressure to demonstrate they have taken all measures to weed out internal threats from employees and contractors with access to sensitive information.

As such, agencies have been moving toward continuous evaluation and more polygraphs. But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence leaves it to individual agencies to determine the need for polygraph exams.

In addition, not all agencies will share polygraph results, possibly requiring an existing fed to take another test for a position in a different agency, said Derrick Dortch, director of Career Services at the Institute of World Politics. One question he said to expect was for examiners to ask candidates whether they had visited or heard of the website AntiPolygraph.org, which claims to offer advice for outsmarting the polygraph exam.

What questions are on the polygraph?

Throughout its history, the federal polygraph exam’s questions have barely changed, said William Henderson, co-founder of Federal Clearance Assistance Service LLC. One exception was the addition of questions about disclosing classified information to media or other unauthorized recipients.

The Federal Psychophysiological Detection of Deception Examiner Handbook, which outlines exam questions into several types including “relevant,” “primary relevant,” “secondary relevant,” “comparison” and “overall truth” — the last of which intended to elicit a physiological response.

The handbook says relevant questions should be clear and concise, free of legal terms, answerable with “yes or no,” and not be worded in the form of an accusation or infer knowledge or guilt.

Irrelevant screening questions are described as those to orientate a respondent before a relevant question is asked, but should still be neutral and not evocative of emotion, according to the handbook. Unlike private employers, federal examiners can also ask about examinees’ personal lives, religious and political beliefs, sexual behaviors or labor union activities.

But Dortch, a career expert in intelligence and national security as well as the host of Federal News Radio’s Fed Access, said that exact questions vary by agency. For example, he said, a law enforcement agency such as the FBI will be more concerned with questions related to a job candidate’s criminal background, while the CIA will likely ask more about foreign contacts.

“No one should expect every polygraph to be the same,” he said.

What training do polygraph examiners have?

Academic and industry experts have said examiners do affect polygraph results, based on their phrasing of questions, interpretation of responses and machine readings. Nevertheless, training for federal polygraph examiners is not standardized across agencies.

But according to the Intelligence Community Policy Guidance 704.6, issued in 2015, all examiners are expected to have the National Center for Credibility Assessment, renamed from the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment in 2010, which originated as the Army Polygraph School in 1951. Additional training can also change by agency.

CBP, for example, requires NCCA certification for in-house examiners as well as for contracting examiners, according to job listings found on USAJobs.gov and the American Polygraph Association.

Other possible training may occur at the U.S. Military Police School/Army Polygraph School and the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute, and the Psychophysiological Detection of Deception program, among others.

What about the debate around polygraphs’ accuracy?

In 2003, a National Academies committee to review the scientific evidence on polygraph exams authored a report saying the scientific evidence for polygraphs as an employment screening method was relatively low and that fairly basic countermeasures could undermine the results. The report also said that reasons for a lack of research into the use of polygraphs by the federal government were “structural,” meaning that the national security and law enforcement agencies who administer the exams “do not operate in a culture of science to meet their needs for detecting deception,” and were committed to using them.

This and the fact that many courts will not allow polygraph results submitted as evidence in criminal proceedings are among the reasons Sean Bigley, a  frequent writer on the subject for ClearanceJobs.com, said he was unsure why exactly agencies still embrace the practice.

“The general consensus seems to be that [it’s] an effective scare tactic,” Bigley said. “It gets people to cough up details about their lives that they wouldn’t otherwise do.”

He also said the examiners’ training and the way in which they phrase questions can yield wildly different results from respondents.

IARPA’s Jeannotte said some deep government-sponsored research into the practice includes the 2003 National Academies study, as well as a 2006 report on polygraph exams at the Department of Justice, in which the Office of the Inspector General did not make recommendations on the practice. She said she was not aware of any systematic evaluations of polygraphs by ODNI.

“Everybody has been moving toward it in last 20 years,” Dortch said. “It’s not a fail-safe tool.”

The American Polygraph Association describes polygraphs as highly accurate but not infallible. The organization offers remedies for both examiners and examinees in the case of false positives or negatives due to human error.

“However, since the same physiological measures are recorded and the same basic physiological principles may apply in both event-specific and screening examinations, there is little reason to believe that such testing is of no value in screening situations as some opponents claim,” the organization writes on its website.

Can the test results be used against you?

The SF-86 form submitted by clearance seekers says they may not be prosecuted for admitting on the form to illegal drug use within the last seven years. It also says that answers given by current federal employees may not be used as evidence in subsequent criminal proceedings.

However, the late attorney Bill Bransford, of federal employment law firm Shaw, Bransford and Roth told Federal News Radio in 2012 that although polygraph answers in the federal employment process are not supposed to be used against you, if you confess to a crime the examiner may have cause to report it, should other evidence support this claim.

The SF-86 form also outlines how OPM may disclose answers to IC agencies for national security reasons, and in court proceedings when the federal government is a party.

What if you fail the test?

If you fail the exam you are permitted to appeal the results, which Dortch said he always recommends. But a Freedom of Information Act request is usually needed to see the results. Those who refuse to take the exam may not be able to proceed with the application process.

Henderson said his biggest concern with the polygraph is when examinees are accused of using countermeasures to beat the test.

“’Countermeasures’ is really a subjective variant,” he said. “There’s no agreement among examiners as what actually constitutes countermeasures.”

Until June 2017, nothing prohibited agencies from taking action against examinees for solely failing a polygraph. But now, examiners must gather further evidence to justifying denying a security clearance for taking other action, according to ODNI’s updated Security Executive Agent Directive 4.

If a current federal employee fails the test, Henderson said, they will likely be placed on administrative leave until a determination can be made.

A new report from the Office of Personnel Management detailing how agencies used official time in 2016, the most recent study since 2014, referred to it as “taxpayer-funded union time.” The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee intends to take a closer look at use of official time at a May 24 hearing.

So what exactly is official time, where does it come from and what is it used for?

Civil Service Reform Act of 1978

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 created official time for employees involved in collective bargaining negotiations, or representing an employee on behalf of the union, when they would otherwise be performing their duties. In other words, official time exists to guarantee employees who represent their fellow coworkers during internal agency deliberations do not suffer a loss of pay.

What work does it apply to?

Official time could mean representing employees in grievances or disciplinary actions. It could also apply to helping an agency determine telework policy, procedures for promotions, or other policies that could affect the workplace or quality of life for agency employees.

So referring to it as “taxpayer-funded union time” is misleading, because everything official time is authorized for is agency business, not union business. In fact, the Civil Service Reform Act expressly prohibits employees from performing union business on official time.

“Any activities performed by any employee relating to the internal business of a labor organization (including the solicitation of membership, elections of labor organization officials, and collection of dues) shall be performed during the time the employee is in a nonduty status,” the legislation reads.

Who pays for it?

Federal employees are not required to join a union; however, the law requires unions to represent every federal employee, regardless of whether they are members of the union. Because of that, to ensure fair representation, agencies are required to pay employees for their use of official time. Otherwise, employees would be forced to meet with managers about workplace issues on their own time, while managers would be compensated for those meetings.

But agencies have a say in this too. While the Civil Service Reform Act grants the Federal Labor Relations Authority the ability to determine the circumstances in which agencies are required to pay official time, it limits the amount of official time to “any amount the agency and the exclusive representative involved agree to be reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.”

So union representatives don’t have free reign to charge agencies for as much official time as they please. That has to be negotiated between the agency and the union representatives, and approved by agency management.

What does it cost?

Official time doesn’t cost agencies anything extra monetarily — employees are paid for official time at their normal rate.

There’s also a perception that official time costs agencies man-hours that would ordinarily be devoted to the agency’s mission. While it may be true that employees on official time are not conducting their usual duties, what they are performing is human resources functions for the agency.

In addition, deliberations made on official time save agencies time and money that would otherwise be spent resolving conflicts through litigation in the courts.