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Washington, D.C.—In an important legislative victory for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees, a House-Senate conference committee has sharply cut the amount of money available to the department for implementation of its so-called MaxHR personnel system.
DHS initially had sought $71.4 million for this purpose, but conferees on the DHS Appropriations bill set the final number for fiscal 2007 at $25 million. The appropriation, which has to be ratified by both House and Senate acceptance of the conference report, is less even than the $29.7 million Congress provided DHS for MaxHR last year.
And it comes on the heels of the DHS decision earlier this week not to appeal to the Supreme Court the district and federal appeals court victories of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in having significant portions of the DHS personnel system declared illegal.
NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley, who had called on legislators to recognize the fatal flaws in the regressive DHS personnel rules, described the reduced appropriation for MaxHR as “a major victory, both for NTEU and the dedicated men and women of DHS”—particularly in light of the massive, 133 percent increase for it sought by the administration for fiscal 2007.
Importantly, the conference report also provides funding for an additional 450 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers at the nation’s ports of entry and for critical ‘non-intrusive’ inspection equipment. The report said as well that conferees agreed to “fully fund the budget requests for all cargo security and trade facilitation requests within CBP.”
NTEU has been stressing the need for increased staffing and resources at border crossing points. On that front, President Kelley has been leading the effort to shine a light on the continuing failures of CBP’s ‘One Face at the Border” initiative. Under it, the work of legacy Customs, Immigration and Naturalization and Agriculture inspectors is combined into a single position. The result has been a serious lack of inspectional expertise and a sharp decline in the morale of CBP employees.
NTEU has called on CBP to abandon the misguided ‘One Face’ program, and is continuing its work in educating members of Congress on the negative impacts of the agency initiative at the nation’s air, land and seaports.
NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 15,000 in CBP.