Senate Adopts Significant A-76 Reform
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Contact: Randy Erwin, NFFE
Legislative
Director
Phone:
(202) 257-0948
Washington, DC – Late yesterday, the United States Senate adopted an amendment to the fiscal year 2008 Defense Authorization bill that would make several revisions to the A-76 public-private competition process. Together, these changes would do much to level the playing field for federal workers when competing against private contractors for the same government work. The amendment was sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and had 10 cosponsors. The amendment passed with a 51-44 vote. The Senate later passed the Defense Authorization bill as amended by a 92-3 vote.
The A-76 amendment would do the following:
- Exclude health care and retirement costs from the A-76 cost comparison process.
- Eliminate automatic recompetition of work performed by federal employees under A-76.
- Establish equitable appeal rights for all federal employees.
- Eliminate OMB outsourcing quotas.
- Require the establishment of guidance to allow federal employees to compete for new work.
- Establish in law a competition requirement for non-DoD agencies which is identical to what is permanent law for DoD.
“The rules governing A-76 have not been fair to federal workers,” said NFFE President Richard N. Brown. “These changes will do a lot to eliminate some of the egregious advantages contractors enjoy when competing against federal employees for government work.”
“We are happy to see that the Senate did not back away from addressing this important issue,” said Brown. “When contractors are given an unfair advantage over federal workers, it is the tax-payers that pay for it in the end. The playing field should be level.”