Forest Service supervisor promotions rile up officers

by Kyung M. Song Seattle Times Washington bureau

Ordinarily, seven U.S. Forest Service supervisors getting promotions and pay increases might not raise hackles.

These are not ordinary times for sequestration-pinched federal employees.

Last week, the Forest Service revealed it elevated the jobs of seven of the agency’s top nine
law-enforcement managers to level 15, the highest federal pay grade below the senior executive ranks. The reclassification for the managers, called special agents in charge, could boost their base pay by $20,000 or more, to as much as $155,500 a year in the Northwest.

Among Forest Service workers already chafing under budget cuts and hiring freezes, the news about their big bosses stirred inordinate anger.

Matthew Valenta, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 5300, which represents 650 forest law-enforcement workers around the nation, said many union members have been swapping outraged reactions.

“The timing of these raises for top managers is a slap in the face to the officers on the ground,” Valenta said. “They are disgusted.”...

A half dozen departments, including the Pentagon and Internal Revenue Service, are furloughing workers without pay because of mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration that went into effect earlier this year. But the Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, is not among them.

Still, Valenta, a law-enforcement officer in the Colville National Forest in Eastern Washington, said forest workers are coping with severely low morale. He questioned the decision by David Ferrell, Forest Service’s director of law enforcement and investigations, to pursue the job-grade change last year after the agency’s human-resources office initially ruled against it.

The federal pay scale, known as the “general schedule,” is based on the scope of job responsibilities, not worker performance. Two of the nine forest regions overseen by special agents in charge were elevated to Grade 15 several years ago.

Valenta said the union has received no explanation whether the duties of the seven other law-enforcement chiefs were expanded to warrant a job upgrade.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE