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Washington, D.C.—The concept of improving government service to the public is one that federal employees have long supported, but without adequate funding for federal agencies, it will remain “a most difficult goal to achieve,” the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal workers said today.

In commenting on a lengthy report by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB), entitled “The President’s Management Agenda,” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) called the plan “extremely disappointing” in that it proposed no new funding for agencies.

“It is one thing,” Kelley said, “to call on agencies to fully implement existing hiring and pay authorities in an effort to recruit and retain the skilled workers the government needs. It is quite another for federal agencies to attempt to accomplish these goals without sufficient funding. It just won’t work.”

Kelley also criticized the OMB report for failing to address two critical needs that affect not just every federal employee, but the ability of all agencies to address manpower issues—the need for higher federal pay and the clear-cut importance of improving the federal health benefits package.

“Higher pay for federal civilian workers is the single most important step the administration can take to help head off the government’s human capital crisis,” Kelley said. “Yet, the administration continues to insist on a totally inadequate pay raise for the government’s civilian employees for the year 2002.”

The NTEU leader emphasized that “no meaningful steps on these issues can be taken” without the involvement of federal employees and their representatives. And she took sharp issue with the report’s contention that the way to make government more efficient and responsive is to send more government jobs to the private sector, in part by increasing the number of jobs that undergo public-private competition and by sharply boosting the jobs that are contracted directly to the private sector.

Direct conversion of jobs to the private sector sidesteps any competition, Kelley noted. What’s more, she said, increasing public-private competition “provides little value to America’s taxpayers when government agencies are unable to compete fairly because of their inadequate funding, and when federal employees are denied the range of tools and training they need to make it a fair competition.”

Moreover, Kelley said, there is no evidence that the contractor work force does as a good a job as federal employees, much less a better one; nor, she said, is there any meaningful information on the true cost and extent of the contractor workforce.

She noted that the OMB report itself cites a reduction in the size of the federal workforce to its lowest level in some 50 years—and yet, she said, the work is still being done at a high level of efficiency and effectiveness. “This speaks directly to the quality and professionalism of federal workers, “ Kelley said.

“The administration’s policies ought to be directed toward recognizing, rewarding and enhancing federal service, rather than driving people away from it by threatening to send even more of their work to the private sector, “ she added.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.