Provision to fire tax-delinquent federal employees pulled

[The Straight Story]

Provision to fire tax-delinquent federal employees pulled
By Robert Brodsky [e-mail] March 4, 2010

A legislative compromise that would have allowed agencies to fire tax-delinquent federal employees fell apart on Thursday.

The compromise softened an amendment to the 2009 Contracting and Tax Accountability Act that Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced earlier this week. The act already would prohibit companies that don't pay their taxes from winning federal contracts; Chaffetz's amendment extended that principle to "seriously delinquent" federal employees and congressional staffers.

Modified language that would have provided federal employees with due process protection and a hardship exemption won support from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. But, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce, and other Democrats, said the compromise amendment still was unduly harsh because it defined delinquency as the issuance of a lien by the Internal Revenue Service, which could be an early stage in resolving a tax dispute.


Chaffetz, however, argued that the amendment offered protection to employees who were working to settle the tax disputes.

Democrats also raised concerns about whether the amendment would overburden the Office of Personnel Management, which would be responsible for administering the provision.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44729&oref=todaysnews

[RC]

1. In other words, there were too many upper echelon not paying their share.