House Votes to Block Job Competition Rules For the second straight year, the House defied a veto threat and voted to block job competitions under the Bush administration’s revised Circular A-76. The House approved an amendment by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) that would force agencies to conduct competitions under the rules that existed before Circular A-76 was rewritten last year. Van Hollen told colleagues the new rules “put federal employees at a disadvantage.” In fact, the Office of Management and Budget reported that federal employees won 89% of the jobs that were competed under the new rules in fiscal 2003. (SAA, 5/28) The Van Hollen amendment was added to the Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill by a vote of 210-187 on Sept. 21. OMB officials said the president’s advisers would recommend a veto because the amendment would “effectively shut down” the administration’s competitive sourcing initiative. “Prohibiting funding for public/private competitions is akin to mandating a monopoly regardless of the impact on services to citizens and the added costs to taxpayers,” The White House said in a policy statement. Van Hollen said he does not want to kill competitive sourcing, but wants the administration to rewrite the rules so that they are fair to government employees. Federal employee unions have been pushing the legislation, and contractor groups have been working hard to block it. The Contract Services Association of America “and its coalition colleagues have been flooding the Hill with emails, phone calls, visits and lots of paper,” said Cathy Garman, CSA’s senior vice president, in a message to members before the vote. The House passed the Van Hollen amendment last year, but it was dropped in a conference committee with the Senate. This year Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has introduced a similar amendment. It has not yet come up for a vote in the Senate. Van Hollen’s is one of several legislative challenges to the competitive sourcing initiative, in what has become an annual ritual in Congress: One or both houses votes restrictions on the program, the White House threatens a veto, and the restrictions vanish when the final bill emerges from a conference committee. One restriction has been enacted into law: The provisions of the 2005 Defense appropriations act, signed by President Bush, require contractors to beat the government’s cost by at least 10% in order to win any competition involving more than 10 employees. In other departments the 10% cost advantage applies only to competitions involving more than 65 employees. The bill would also give DOD employees in those small units the right to restructure their work in a so-called most efficient organization before competing with the private sector. That would eliminate the streamlined competitions for small work units that are allowed by OMB Circular A-76. Other pending legislation contains additional restrictions on competitive sourcing. The Senate voted in June to allow federal employees to appeal the results of job competitions to the Government Accountability Office (the new name of the General Accounting Office). The provision is in the Defense authorization bill that is awaiting action by a joint House-Senate conference committee.