When working with remote or multi-state workers, government contractors may need to segment cost pool allocations differently to maintain equitability and avoid overbilling.

There is more to this change than new or separate cost pool allocations. Employing fully remote workers can affect payroll taxes and state licensing, budgeting and your culture.

Even with hybrid office arrangements in which workers are in the office part of the week, you will experience changes in some of these areas. If this is your situation, take a proactive approach to manage your costs, culture and audit risk.

Payroll recordkeeping

When an employee lives in or plans to relocate to another state, find out if you need to register in that state for payroll taxes or employer licensing. Create a tracking method to make sure you have the accounts and registration needed for newly hired and existing employees in other states.

If your employee lives just across the state border and still performs most or all work within your home state, your tracking may look a little different than for an employee who lives and works two states away. Check the requirements for each state or work with your trusted advisor in this area to identify each locality’s requirements.

Cost pool allocations

Fully remote employees can affect cost pools for government contracts. For one thing, you don’t incur the facilities, phone or utilities costs in the same way. You may still provide things like laptops and mobile phones, but costs can be much less overall. This can be somewhat like the situation you may already have where employees work on the government or contractor site. In a hybrid arrangement, however, costs could be higher because you are paying for remote equipment and supplies as well as your facilities costs.

Your considerations include forward-pricing budgets and equitable allocation. Tracking expenses for a fully remote portion of your workforce can help you develop more accurate forward-pricing budgets. This process can also bring up potential considerations of leasing needs and contract planning scenarios to calculate the best path forward. Remember, the guiding line with differentiating your facilities pool (or creating a segmentation in them) will be when it is no longer fair and equitable for the costs to be collected and allocated among the contracts.

If you anticipate employing or contracting a significant scale of remote employees, run some scenarios and do a cost projection to determine the point when cost allocation among your contracts could become inequitable.

Communication and culture

Although this consideration is not a cost element, remote employee communication and culture can affect contract performance and employee retention. Be proactive in this area to keep everyone on the same page, enjoying their work.

• Find out how your remote employees like to communicate (e.g., video, phone, text), or establish a policy for this communication.
• Schedule informal check-ins in addition to your regular contract meetings.
• Make opportunities for your remote employees to speak up during your team meetings.
• Keep employees informed about virtual events or team celebrations.
• Create an internal company newsletter or message board forum to communicate.
• Encourage employees to participate on committees and follow corporate social media.

Be intentional with communications because they won’t happen as organically as they do when teams are 100% in the office.

The great upside of the shift to remote work is that if employees have a significant life change that will take them out of state, remote work can help retain them. It can also broaden your hiring pool if you have been able to successfully navigate remote work.

Take this conversation seriously. You can retain great employees by providing a process for this conversation — what is possible and what is fair — for the company and the employee. It may not work in all circumstances but with it being a known potential, it allows the conversation to happen.

Michelle Jenkins, CPA, is a Partner and Department Head for the Solutions Services Department at Anglin Reichmann Armstrong and she has a special focus on women-owned and small government contractors in the areas of contractor technology solutions, accounting and growth guidance.

The post Cost pool considerations for remote and multi-state employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

Most agencies whose primary mission revolves around the collection of data, such as the Intelligence Community or certain healthcare agencies, reserve the data for internal government consumption due to privacy or national security considerations, publishing only analysis and guidance. But NOAA is the opposite. All of the data it collects is intended for public products, and just as much analysis happens outside the agency as within. In essence, NOAA has two centers of data gravity: One at the sensors, where the data is collected, and one in the public sphere, where the data is consumed.

And it’s looking to edge computing to push workloads in both directions.

That’s why it’s looking to move to a community-based modeling approach. Frank Indiviglio, NOAA’s deputy director for High Performance Computing & Communications (HPCC), said conversations are happening about how NOAA can containerize its climate models in order to push the models themselves out to the public to understand, build upon and tweak.

“Those tool sets and software environments, that’s going to drive innovation,” he said. “Hardware enables innovation, but software, I think, is really the layer that we’re going to need to focus on and push, not only to modernize, but to get those tools out there in the public sphere so that we can all get better together, for lack of a better term.”

For example, Indiviglio said that as hardware platforms get smaller, edge computing is enabling the use of what are essentially supercomputers in places he couldn’t even have conceived of ten years ago. Artificial intelligence is enabling NOAA’s fisheries to do genomic sequencing in the field, and identify fish species in the water without a diver. AI is also improving the accuracy of forecasts, leading to a better product and freeing up people to do more science. Autonomous platforms are increasing the amount of data NOAA can gather from inside hurricanes while reducing the need for people to put themselves in harm’s way by flying into them.

And that requires a heavy focus on the data itself, and how it’s transmitted and disseminated.

“It’s integrity,” Indiviglio said. “We want to make sure that the data that we disseminate to the public sphere is genuine data that was produced by our science and that people can trust. What you don’t want is either data that gets ingested or put out into the public that has some kind of a question mark on its integrity.”

One challenge is the number of system boundaries that NOAA’s data has to cross. Indiviglio said it goes from the observation system, where it’s collected by the sensor, to the HPCC system where it’s processed, analyzed and becomes part of a forecast. Then it moves into data distribution. Moving data across all those systems while maintaining integrity is a challenge that he said requires the modernization of platforms. But he also said NOAA benefits from a long history of prioritizing data fundamentals and interoperability, which left the agency well positioned to not only streamline those processes, but begin to layer AI on top of them.

That’s why the cloud was such a good fit for NOAA. The agency has always had a mobile workforce, with end users on both ships in the Arctic and at stations in the Antarctic, and ensuring the ability to securely transfer data from those locations was paramount. Now they’re leveraging the cloud to provide more flexibility around workloads. NOAA’s supercomputer programs have continued to grow, far beyond the capacity to provide the required compute through hardware. The cloud allows the agency to provide that flexible capacity to those remote workstations and cut down the weeks and months of latency that used to be commonplace. The workloads are able to gravitate toward the mass of the data.

“You can get compute to people who are remote and it would be kind of limited in the past. We can build environments that go to them,” Indiviglio said. “And we can, now with technology, we can get a lot more data and take a lot of people out of harm’s way to get that data. So it’s kind of a win-win on both sides, right? So you can do more analysis in the field, you can certainly process more in the field, but you can also get a lot more [data], which is a good thing.”

The post Edge computing enables NOAA to push workloads closer to public consumers, not just field researchers first appeared on Federal News Network.

Land managers have scheduled two public meetings next week to take comments on the assessment made public Thursday.

The withdrawal plan was first outlined by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2021 in response to the concerns of Native American tribes in New Mexico and Arizona that development was going unchecked across a wide swath of northwestern New Mexico and that tribal officials did not have a seat at the table.

In addition to the proposed withdrawal, Haaland — who is from Laguna Pueblo and is the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency — also committed to taking a broader look at how federal land across the region can be better managed while taking into account environmental effects and cultural preservation.

Indigenous leaders and environmental groups reiterated this week that the broader look would be a more meaningful step toward permanent protections for cultural resources in the San Juan Basin.

The environmental assessment bolsters that argument since it notes that the proposed withdrawal would not affect existing leases and that much of the interest by the industry for future development already is under lease or falls outside the boundary of what would be withdrawn.

The Bureau of Land Management has estimated, based on 2018 data, that not quite 100 new oil and gas wells likely would be drilled over the next 20 years within the withdrawal area. It’s estimated that less than half of those likely would not be drilled if the withdrawal were approved.

With only a few dozen wells expected in the area, natural gas production for the area would decrease by half of 1% and oil production could see a 2.5% reduction.

However, the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association argued that even though the withdrawal would not affect leases on Navajo land or allotments owned by individual Navajos, those leases essentially become landlocked by taking federal mineral holdings off the board.

Navajo Nation officials have made similar arguments, saying millions of dollars in annual oil and gas revenues benefit the tribe and individual tribal members Some leaders have advocated for a smaller buffer around Chaco park to be protected due to the economic implications.

The industry group said there are more than 418 unleased allotments in the buffer zone associated with over 22,000 allottees.

Environmentalists say the potential development for the withdrawal area represents just a fraction of the 3,200 wells overall that the region could see over the next two decades.

Mike Eisenfeld of the San Juan Citizens Alliance has been monitoring and protesting development throughout the region for years. He said Friday that the larger issue is the expansive area beyond the withdrawal zone and that federal land managers need to evaluate requests for permitting within Haaland’s bigger “Honoring Chaco” initiative.

“We think that requires extensive consultation on protecting this region from industrialization of the landscape,” he said.

In June, the All Pueblo Council of Governors traveled from New Mexico to Washington to urge the Interior Department to finalize its proposal to protect the Chaco area, arguing that public land management should better reflect the value of sacred sites, cultural resources and traditional stories that are tied to the region.

A World Heritage site, Chaco Culture National Historical Park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization with many tribes from the Southwest tracing their roots to the high desert outpost.

Within the park, walls of stacked stone rise up from the canyon bottom, some perfectly aligned with the seasonal movements of the sun and moon. Archaeologists also have found evidence of great roads that stretched across what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

The post US outlines effects of withdrawing land from oil drilling first appeared on Federal News Network.

Haney’s chief responsibility is to care for the vast lawns, colorful flower gardens, hundreds of trees, thousands of shrubs and burgeoning vegetable garden on 18 acres of property surrounding the White House. He also picks out the official White House Christmas tree every year — and already chose this year’s fir from a Pennsylvania farm.

To honor Haney, Biden and his wife, Jill, surprised Haney on Monday by planting an elm tree on the south grounds. Biden said visitors in future years are “going to be looking at this tree and asking, ’Who’s Dale?”

Haney joked that he “might still be here.”

But Haney is perhaps better known to many at the White House, from staff to Secret Service officers, as the keeper of the president’s pets.

“He’s like the whisperer,” said Anita McBride, who was a young aide in the correspondence office in Ronald Reagan’s administration when she first met Haney.

These days, Haney is often seen walking Commander, President Joe Biden’s German shepherd.

“The first thing that I think about when I think about Dale is his relationship with the first family’s animals,” said Gary Walters, who had a lengthy employment record of his own serving four presidents over 20 years as White House chief usher, managing the residence staff.

Walters recalled the chaos of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the evacuation of the White House while President George W. Bush was in Florida. Walters and some of his staff had stayed behind despite the evacuation. They were on the South Lawn when Walters turned around “and there was Dale standing with Barney under one arm and Kitty Cat under the other.”

“He had to find them and was looking for direction on what to do with them,” Walters said of Bush’s Scottish terrier and cat. The pets eventually were reunited with Laura Bush at a remote location.

A TWO-YEAR PLAN

Anyone starting a career these days is unlikely to still have that job a half century later, but Haney’s long employment record fits right in at the White House.

He’s a member of the operations staff — the scores of housekeepers, butlers, electricians, carpenters, gardeners and others — who aren’t involved in the policy or politics. Their job is to keep the place running and take care of the families. Many hold their jobs for decades.

“It’s a unique role within the White House,” said McBride, who encountered Haney again when she returned to work for Presidents George H.W. Bush and later, for his son.

Haney had planned to work just two years at the White House when he started in 1972, during Richard Nixon’s presidency. He had a bachelor’s degree in horticulture and wanted to go back to school to continue his studies.

He was interning in the gardens at the Dumbarton Oaks museum in Washington when the White House called over looking for someone who could help with its grounds care. He interviewed and started work six months later as a gardener with the National Park Service, which cares for the White House grounds.

Haney became foreman, then chief horticulturalist, before he was promoted to grounds superintendent in 2008, a position that made him part of the White House residence staff. Haney reports to the chief usher, and supervises a full-time staff of 12 gardeners, maintenance workers, electricians and plumbers.

“When I accepted the job I agreed to stay for two years,” he said in an interview with White House History Quarterly, a publication of the White House Historical Association. “But the time has gone by so fast that it really doesn’t feel like 50 years.”

He and his team are so busy that “it has been easy to forget that time is passing. No day is ever the same and every day brings challenges.”

EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY

Haney, who turns 71 on Nov. 4, has seen gobs of White House history unfold:

Nixon departing the White House by helicopter after he resigned in 1974. President Jimmy Carter overseeing the signing of a landmark peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

The crash of a small plane on the grounds in 1994. The evacuation on 9/11. President Barack Obama’s “beer summit” in 2009. President Donald Trump hosting portions of the Republican Party’s national political convention on the South Lawn in 2020.

Fifty years of annual Easter Egg Rolls and numerous state arrival ceremonies for world leaders, including three visits by Queen Elizabeth II and three different popes. Another state arrival is in the works for France’s president on Dec. 1.

The South Lawn will become a wedding venue on Nov. 19 for Biden’s granddaughter Naomi.

WORKING WITH THE EAST WING

First families typically find ways to leave a lasting imprint on the White House and sometimes that involves the grounds.

Most recently, Haney helped Melania Trump add a tennis pavilion to the south grounds and renovate the Rose Garden.

“His meticulous attention to detail always ensures and preserves the beauty of the White House grounds for many to enjoy,” the former first lady said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Haney also helped Michelle Obama create her 1,100-square-foot “ kitchen garden, ” which continues to sprout an assortment of vegetables, fruit and herbs. A beehive produces honey.

Laura Bush remembered Haney as “the best friend to all the animals.”

“Our dogs Spot, Barney and Beazley adored him,” she said in a statement to AP. “They loved him more than they loved us.”

Jill Biden announced Haney’s public service milestone by tweeting a photo of him with her, the president and Commander in the Oval Office.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, sent Haney a letter thanking him for bringing his “passion” and “expertise to the immensely difficult task of caring for the White House grounds.” They added: “We will also never forget how wonderfully you cared for Sunny and Bo,” the family’s dogs.

“Indeed, you have made and lived history,” Bill and Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea said in their own note to Haney, also shared with AP.

GUIDING STAR

Haney was one of the first people Debra Dunn met after she was put in charge of the White House visitor’s office after the elder Bush took office in 1989.

Easter came early that year, she said, and only one member of her small staff had experience planning events for 30,000 people.

But Haney talked her through some of the logistics, she said, and introduced her to other staffers who could help, like carpenters and florists.

For Halloween, Dunn recalled fretting about a setting and props. Haney told her about an enormous pumpkin from a past celebration that was sitting in a warehouse.

“How would I have known that existed?” she asked in a telephone interview from Paris, where she lives and works. “He was just my guiding star.”

McBride said that’s why people love Haney.

“Anybody that’s worked in the White House has encountered him, whether it’s once or a hundred times,” she said. “The mere mention of his name just brings a smile to your face because he’s so joyful about his job and friendly to everyone.”

The post Meet Dale Haney, the White House groundskeeper for 50 years first appeared on Federal News Network.

On-base housing wasn’t an option — the waitlist for a four-bedroom home in the neighborhoods they qualified for was 14 to 16 months.

Neither were the military-only hotels near base where new arrivals can pay low rates as they get their bearings — those were full, too.

So Martin cast a wide net across San Diego and started applying for rental homes, all sight unseen.

“I was waking up and the first thing I was doing was looking at properties,” Martin said. “I was looking at it midday, before I went to bed. I had alerts set. It became a full-time job.”

More than 30 rental applications later and hundreds of dollars in application fees down the drain, the Martins finally found a home.

But there were caveats. They’d have to start paying rent a month before they actually moved. And, at $4,200 per month, their rent was nearly $700 more than the monthly basic allowance for housing, known as the BAH, that her husband, a lieutenant, receives.

“We’ll probably be here two or three years, so that could be $20,000 that we’re paying out of pocket above BAH just for rent,” Martin said after completing her family’s fourth move in 15 years last month.

“It’s affecting us personally but then I think about how we were a junior enlisted family at one point. I cannot imagine the struggles (they) are going through.”

Housing has long been a major benefit for service members, a subsidy to salaries that trail the private sector. But, amid record-breaking spikes in rent, the Department of Defense has neglected its commitment to help military families find affordable places to live, service members and housing activists say.

That’s forced many to settle for substandard homes, deal with extremely long commutes or pay thousands out of pocket they hadn’t budgeted for.

“We have families coming to us that are on exorbitantly lengthy waiting lists and sitting in homes that they can’t afford, like an Airbnb rental, or they’re at a hotel or camping in tents or living in RVs,” said Kate Needham, a veteran who co-founded the nonprofit Armed Forces Housing Advocates in May 2021.

“I don’t think civilians really understand — they might think we’re living in free housing and just having a great time, making lots of money. And that’s not the case at all.”

Needham’s group supplies microgrants to military families in need, some of whom have resorted to food banks because their salaries do not cover such basics.

Reports of the housing squeeze military families face has alarmed members of Congress, who are pushing legislation that would force the Department of Defense to rethink how it handles housing.

A common complaint is that with rents soaring nationwide, the housing allowances, which vary by rank and are recalculated annually, haven’t kept pace with rental markets, even though they’re supposed to cover 95% of rental costs for the approximately two-thirds of active-duty personnel who, like the Martins, have to live off base.

According to a data analysis by The Associated Press of five of the most populous military bases in the U.S., housing allowances across all ranks have risen an average of 18.7% since January 2018. In that span, according to real estate company Zillow, rents have skyrocketed 43.9% in those markets: Carlsbad, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; Killeen, Texas, and Tacoma, Washington.

And because of how tough off-base markets are, on-base housing has become a hot commodity, with many bases having long waitlists.

Needham argues that the discrepancy between military housing allowances and the current market should alarm officials who are already struggling to recruit the next generation.

“If you can’t afford your job, why the hell would you stay in the job?” Needham said. “People are feeling abused by the military in so many different areas — the sexual assault issues, the lack of attention to medical care, the lack of attention to mental health. This is just another tick in the box that’s like, ‘Why would I join the military?’ And if you don’t have enough numbers, that’s a long-term national security problem.”

The Department of Defense did not comment on whether housing issues have become a retention concern. But defense officials said military housing offices monitor markets and offer tools to assist families, including referral services to help find “suitable, affordable housing, whether on or off-base.”

“The Department of Defense is committed to ensuring that service members and their families have access to affordable, quality housing within a reasonable commute of their assigned duty station,” it said.

At MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, housing allowances used to be in line with the local market. In January 2020, a senior airman without dependents received a monthly housing stipend of $1,560, compared to the typical Tampa-area rent price of $1,457, according to Zillow. But since then rent prices have exploded to $2,118 per month in July, while a senior airman’s housing allowance is currently $1,647.

With such a discrepancy and those living off-base facing notoriously long commutes, it’s no wonder that nearly all of MacDill’s 572 homes are full. As of last week, the base was at 95% capacity with a waitlist of 548 families, according to 2nd Lt. Kristin Nielsen, a MacDill public affairs officer.

“We are woefully underhoused,” said Stephanie Poynor, a Tampa property manager and wife of a retired serviceman. “The DoD needs to recognize how much our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coasties are really suffering in this market.”

Tampa real estate agent Renee Thompson, a relocation specialist, said it’s common for service members to rent homes that are an hour’s drive away from base.

“No homes in today’s market will even come close to the service member’s BAH,” said Thompson, who served in the Army. “It’s really disheartening.”

Nielsen said the annual housing allowance calculation takes six to nine months, making it a “lagging indicator of the current dynamic housing market.”

Officials are looking into adding on-base and off-base housing for MacDill, which has about 18,500 active-duty service members, she said. But because of the need for congressional budgetary approval, such long-term solutions are years away.

Even at rural Idaho’s Mountain Home Air Force Base, housing is extremely hard to come by, hampered by its location about 50 miles (80 kilometers) outside of Boise, one of the country’s hottest markets.

Col. Jamaal Mays, the 366th Fighter Wing deputy commander for support, said housing allowances have increased, but not enough to keep pace with the spiking prices.

Brand new airmen are normally housed in dorms on base for about 36 months, but because demand for on-base housing is so high, they often only spend 18 to 20 months.

“They’re being pushed out on the local economy before they’re ready,” Mays said.

With few options, Mays said some airmen have started living in RV parks or moving much further away, including to Twin Falls, where they face commutes of up to two hours on sometimes snowy roads, hardly ideal if they have to respond to a base emergency, not to mention the fuel costs, he said.

Last fall, defense officials issued temporary BAH increases for October to December 2021 in 56 housing markets — including Mountain Home and Tampa. Yet even though rents have continued to rise, there’s no indication a similar bump is coming this fall.

Even if housing allowances do see a bump in January, that could end up taking away food-stamp eligibility for some military families who are struggling with food insecurity. That’s because the Agriculture Department counts BAH as income when determining a family’s eligibility for the SNAP government assistance program.

Frustrated by what she called the Defense Department’s lack of transparency into housing allowance calculations, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., has introduced a measure that would give the department one year to reexamine its process and report on how accurate the current system is.

BAH is like an “algorithm that needs updating on a regular basis,” said Strickland, whose district includes the massive Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, where many military families struggle to find affordable homes. Her proposal is part of the national defense bill that passed the House in July and is awaiting Senate approval.

“The vast majority of people live off post, so this is incredibly urgent,” she said.

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This story was first published on Aug. 20, 2022 It was updated on Aug. 23, 2022 to correct that Col. Jamaal Mays is the 366th Fighter Wing deputy commander for support, not the commander for support.

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Follow R.J. Rico on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rjrico62.

The post Military families’ housing benefits lag as rents explode first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Census Bureau embraced using differential privacy algorithms for the first time with the release last year of the first round of 2020 census data. Those numbers were used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as redrawing political districts in a once-a-decade process known as redistricting.

The demographers and other researchers ask in a letter to Census Bureau Director Robert Santos that the agency drop future plans to use the algorithms on two other important data releases — annual population estimates and the American Community Survey figures. The annual population estimates are used in the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. The American Community Survey provides the most comprehensive data on how people in the U.S. live by asking questions about commuting times, internet access, family life, income, education levels, disabilities, military service and employment.

The privacy protection methods “are inappropriate for the critically important data sets, which are fundamental to American democracy and to equity in redistricting, fund allocation and planning for government services of all kind,” the letter said.

The Census Bureau has said that the differential privacy algorithms are needed since, without them, the growth of easily available third-party data combined with modern computing could allow hackers to piece together the identities of participants in its censuses and surveys in violation of the law. Previous methods of protection are no longer effective, according to the statistical agency.

A panel of three federal judges last year refused to stop the Census Bureau from using the algorithms after their use was challenged in a lawsuit by the state of Alabama.

Census consultant Terri Ann Lowenthal said the letter reflects “the significant unease about the continued usefulness of Census Bureau data in light of new efforts to protect confidentiality in the modern world.”

“The concerns get to the heart of the bureau’s mission, so I’m sure agency leadership will take them seriously and, hopefully, find acceptable solutions based on meaningful stakeholder engagement,” said Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who specializes in census issues.

The letter was spearheaded by steering committee members from the Federal-State Cooperative for Population Estimates, which promotes cooperation and communication between the Census Bureau and state agencies responsible for demographic research. Its members started gathering signatures for the letter last week from other researchers and will present the letter to Santos sometime in the next several weeks.

Differential privacy algorithms add intentional errors to data to obscure the identity of any given participant. It is most noticeable at the smallest geographies, such as census blocks. For the next census in 2030, the demographers recommended using other methods to protect confidentiality such as combining blocks with few people.

Some of the detailed data that were made public in previous censuses won’t be released at the smallest geographic levels, and efforts to apply the algorithm have delayed the release of the next round of 2020 census data until next year, almost two years after it should have been released, the letter said.

“These key data for local government planning will be out-of-date when they are finally released,” it said.

City University of New York sociology professor emeritus Andrew Beveridge warned over the weekend at the Joint Statistical Meetings conference in Washington that private data providers are ready “to pounce” and fill the gap if researchers feel the Census Bureau data are unusable. That could lead to the privatization of the U.S. statistical infrastructure, Beveridge said during a presentation at the largest gathering of statisticians and data users in North America.

The demographers claim in their letter that the statistical agency’s credibility is on the line, saying “the experience of the last few years has undermined user trust in the Census Bureau.”

At a meeting sponsored by the National Academies in June, Santos was asked about the feasibility of reverting back to previous confidentiality methods.

“I understand where you are coming from. I feel your pain,” Santos said. “We have made a determination that if we want to protect data in today’s society… that is not possible.”

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This story has been corrected to show that the National Academies meeting was in June, not last month.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP.

The post Researchers ask Census to stop controversial privacy method first appeared on Federal News Network.

Biden signed an Equal Pay Day executive order that encourages — but does not order — the government to consider banning federal contractors from seeking information about job applicants’ prior salary history. The Labor Department also issued a directive aimed at strengthening federal contractors’ obligations to audit payrolls to help guard against pay disparities based on gender, race or ethnicity.

“It’s my hope that it sets an example for all private companies to follow as well,” Biden said after signing the executive order. “Gender equality is not a women’s issue alone. It benefits everybody.”

The Office of Personnel Management was directed to consider a regulation to address the use of prior salary history in hiring and setting compensation for federal workers.

Equal Pay Day is designed to call attention to how much longer women must work to earn what men earn.

Data show that while the pay gap is at its smallest ever, the coronavirus pandemic has altered women’s labor force participation so that “what we’re seeing is an artificial narrowing,” said Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center.

For instance, women who remained in the labor force during the pandemic and worked full time often had higher earnings than their counterparts who lost low-paying jobs, so 2020 figures should not be compared with wage gap data from prior years, Tucker said.

The cloud of the pandemic cast a shadow over this year’s Equal Pay Day events at the White House — which included speeches by prominent activists and a familiar Biden administration refrain for workers to join unions.

“Over the past two years, the pandemic has only deepened these inequities, as caregiving has become more expensive and more difficult to find,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at an afternoon event.

“Over a 40-year career, a woman will lose out on about $400,000. For Black women, Latina women, Native American women, that loss in wages is closer to $1 million,” Harris said.

The White House Equal Pay Day summit was attended by Cabinet members, company executives and players from the U.S. women’s soccer team, who recently won a $24 million settlement with U.S. Soccer in a discrimination dispute.

The settlement includes a commitment to equalize pay and bonuses to match the men’s team.

Star midfielder Megan Rapinoe said the team’s high-profile win could especially resonate with union workers, who collectively fight for equal rights in the workplace.

“I think the more we connect our stories, the more we literally connect with each other,” she said, ”if I’m seeing myself in union workers in Alabama and they’re seeing themselves in us or our team, it’s all kind of the same thing because we’re all dealing with the same issue.”

Among other issues, the Biden administration wants to combat occupational segregation to get women better access to well-paying jobs, which tend to be male-dominated.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said fair pay efforts have a major impact on the economy, as “some research suggests that if women received a fair paycheck, poverty for working women would be reduced by half.”

Last October, the administration issued a national gender strategy to advance women’s and girls’ full participation in society.

Tucker said there is a long way to go to achieve equal pay — especially after the pandemic.

There were in excess of 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force in February 2022 than in February 2020, which means they are neither working nor searching for employment.

“There was a particular shedding among low-paid workers, and what was left was middle- and higher-paid workers who were insulated from the pandemic,” Tucker said.

In 2020, the average woman who worked full-time all year earned 83 cents on the dollar compared with a male colleague doing the same work, according to the White House. The gap is even bigger for Black and Native American women and Latinas.

The issue also impacts women later in life. A 2020 Brookings Institution study on women’s retirement found Social Security benefits for women are, on average, 80% of those for men.

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

The post Biden urges private companies to help narrow gender pay gap first appeared on Federal News Network.

But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering. Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.

When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which they drew drinking water.

Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.

But in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.

Decades later, several Fort Ord veterans who were diagnosed with cancers — especially rare blood disorders — took the question to Facebook: Are there more of us?

Soon, the group grew to hundreds of people who had lived or served at Fort Ord and were concerned that their health problems might be tied to the chemicals there.

The Associated Press interviewed nearly two dozen of these veterans for this story and identified many more. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and interviewed military, medical and environmental scientists.

There is rarely a way to directly connect toxic exposure to a specific individual’s medical condition. Indeed, the concentrations of the toxics are tiny, measured in parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of an immediate poisoning. Local utilities, the Defense Department and some in the Department of Veterans Affairs insist Fort Ord’s water is safe and always has been.

But the VA’s own hazardous materials exposure website, along with scientists and doctors, agree that dangers do exist for military personnel exposed to contaminants.

The problem is not just at Fort Ord. This is happening all over the U.S. and abroad, almost everywhere the military has set foot, and the federal government is still learning about the extent of both the pollution and the health effects of its toxic legacy.

The AP’s review of public documents shows the Army knew that chemicals had been improperly dumped at Fort Ord for decades. Even after the contamination was documented, the Army downplayed the risks.

And ailing veterans are being denied benefits based on a 25-year-old health assessment. The CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded in 1996 that there were no likely past, present or future risks from exposures at Fort Ord.

But that conclusion was made based on limited data, and before medical science understood the relationship between some of these chemicals and cancer.

This is what is known:

Veterans in general have higher blood cancer rates than the general population, according to VA cancer data. And in the region that includes Fort Ord, veterans have a 35 percent higher rate of multiple myeloma diagnosis than the general U.S. population.

Veterans like Julie Akey.

Akey, now 50, arrived at Fort Ord in 1996 with a gift for linguistics. She enlisted in the Army on the condition that she could learn a new language. And so the 25-year-old was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and lived at Fort Ord as a soldier. By then the base was mostly closed but still housed troops for limited purposes.

“It was incredibly beautiful,” she said. “You have the ocean on one side, and these expansive beaches, and the rolling hills and the mountains behind.”

What she didn’t know at the time was that the ground under her feet, and the water that ran through the sandy soil into an aquifer that supplied some of the base’s drinking water was polluted. Among the contaminants were cancer-causing chemicals including trichloroethylene, also known as the miracle degreaser TCE.

She’d learn this decades later, as she tried to understand how, at just 46 and with no family history of blood cancers, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

“No one told us,” she said.

___

Despite the military’s claims that there aren’t any health problems associated with living and serving at Fort Ord, nor hundreds of other shuttered military bases, almost every closure has exposed widespread toxic pollution and required a massive cleanup. Dozens have contaminated groundwater, from Fort Dix in New Jersey to Adak Naval Air Station in Alaska. Fort Ord is 25 years into its cleanup as a federal Superfund site, and it’s expected to continue for decades.

To date, the military has only acknowledged troops’ health could have been damaged by drinking contaminated water at a single U.S. base: Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and only during a 35-year window, between 1953 to 1987. Servicemembers there were found by federal epidemiologists to have higher mortality rates from many cancers, including multiple myeloma and leukemia. Men developed breast cancer, and pregnant women tended to have children with higher rates of birth defects and low birth weight. Like Fort Ord, Camp Lejeune began closing contaminated wells in the mid-’80s.

Soldiers are often stationed at different bases during their years of military service, but neither the Defense Department nor the VA has systematically tracked toxic exposures at various locations.

Fort Ord’s primary mission was training troops who deployed to World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. It supported several thriving small towns on a piece of coastal land the size of San Francisco. Soldiers and their families lived in houses and apartments connected to its water system, and civilians worked at its airfields, hospitals and other facilities.

In the course of their work preparing for battle, they spilled solvents into the base’s drains, sloughed chemical sludge into underground storage tanks and discarded 55-gallon drums of caustic material in the base landfill, according to a 1982 hazardous waste inventory report.

Curt Gandy, a former airplane mechanic, recalls being routinely doused with toxic chemicals from the 1970s to the 1990s. He said he hosed down aircraft with solvents, cleaned engine parts and stripped paint off fuselages without any protection. There were barrels of toluene, xylene, jet fuel and more.

“It gets on your body, it gets in your face, you get splashed with it, and we’re using pumps to spray this stuff,” he said. “It’s got 250 pounds of pressure and we’re spraying it into the air and it’s atomized.”

On Fridays, crews would forklift barrels of the used flammable liquids down a bumpy sandy road, dumping solvents, paint and metal chips onto the hulks of broken aircraft and tanks at a burn pit. One weekend a month, airfield firefighters would light up the toxic sludge and then douse the roaring fires with foam.

In 1984, an anonymous caller tipped off Fort Ord’s officials that “approximately 30 55-gallon drums,” containing about 600 gallons of a “solvent-type liquid” had been illegally spilled there, an Army report said. The state, which ordered a cleanup two years later, determined the Army had mismanaged the site in a way that threatened both ground and surface waters.

And the burn pit wasn’t the base’s only polluted site.

In 1991, when the Army began investigating what had actually been disposed of at the base’s dump overlooking Monterey Bay, officials told the public the trash was similar to what one would find in the landfill of any small city, according to transcripts of community meetings.

While it’s true that much of the trash going into that dump came from nearby houses — food scraps, old furniture, busted appliances, even gasoline — the Army officials who spoke at the meetings made no mention of the toxic stew of paints and solvents that today are banned from open landfills. The solvent TCE was among dozens of pollutants that scientists discovered as early as 1985 and today still exists in concentrations above the legal limit for drinking water in the aquifer below, according to local and federal water quality reports.

“The water from the aquifer above leaks down into the aquifer below and the pollution just gets deeper,” said Dan O’Brien, a former board member of the Marina Coast Water District, which took over the Army’s wells in 2001. “The toxic material remains in the soil under where it was dumped. Every time it rains, more of the toxin in the soil leeches down into the water table.”

The Army’s early tests of Fort Ord’s wells near the landfill detected levels of TCE 43 separate times from 1985 to 1994. The VA told the AP the contamination was “within the allowable safe range” in areas that provided drinking water.

But 18 of those TCE hits exceeded legal safety limits; one reading was five times that amount. It’s unclear how long and at what concentrations TCE may have been in the water before 1985. And TCE was only one problem. The EPA identified more than 40 “chemicals of concern” in soil and groundwater.

“It was not recognized that it was so toxic back then, and they threw it on the ground after use. They used a ton of it. Now, it’s the most pervasive groundwater contaminant we have,” said Thomas Burke, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former EPA official.

Contractors initially brought in to clean up the contaminated groundwater were warned not to tell community members what they found in their drinking water, specifically not the news media or even local public agencies, according to a 1985 military memo.

At the time, there were elevated levels of TCE in the aquifers, yet the military assured the public the drinking water was safe.

“There never have been any test results that indicate that Fort Ord’s water was unsafe,” an Army official told several local papers in August 1985.

Since then, advances in medical science have increased the understanding of the dangers of the chemicals at Fort Ord. TCE, for example, is now a known human carcinogen, and epidemiological studies indicate a possible link between TCE and blood cancers like non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

TCE “circulates in the body real effectively when you breathe it or drink it,” Burke said. “It’s related strongly to kidney cancer, the development of kidney cancers and suspected in several other cancers.”

Julie Akey spent years collecting names of people who lived at Fort Ord and were later diagnosed with cancers. Her database eventually grew to more than 400 people, nearly 200 of which were listed as having those blood cancers.

___

Akey spent most of her Fort Ord days in a classroom, studying Arabic. But in the afternoons and evenings, she’d run along the coastline and do military drills. At home, she watered her small vegetable plot with the base’s water supply, harvesting the fresh crops to chop into salads.

She filled her water bottle from the tap before heading out each morning, and thought nothing of the showers she took each night. After all, she was among hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the base’s history who did the same.

She fell ill in Bogota, Colombia, in 2016. She’d left the military after nearly six years as a translator and interrogator to become a State Department foreign service officer, a dream job that gave her the chance to travel the world with her twin sons. Quite suddenly she became fatigued with a persistent ache in her bones. Soon she was in screaming pain.

When the Colombian doctors couldn’t find a cause, Akey was sent to the U.S. for what she assumed would be a quick trip. She left plants on the mantel, food in the refrigerator and clothes at the dry cleaners.

She never went back.

After weeks at the Cleveland Clinic, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that attacks plasma cells, and is most often detected in elderly African American men. The disease is treatable but has no cure.

“I was a zombie,” she said. “I cried all the time.”

Worried about keeping her government health insurance, she applied to work at a nearby airport as a part-time baggage checker while recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

“You don’t ever think you’re going to have cancer at 46. Why? Why do I get this crazy cancer that no one’s ever heard of? So, I started looking for answers,” she said.

Akey meticulously reviewed her assignments in Spain and Haiti, her stints in Guyana, Ecuador, Nigeria, at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Gordon in Georgia. And Fort Ord — a federal Superfund site.

“I think that that was my answer,” she said.

Akey read as much as she could about the base, and searched for others like her. She combed through EPA reports, water records, newspaper clippings and obituaries. She scoured social media, and built a database of sick veterans; it’s grown to 491 people to date.

Soon after Akey started a Facebook group in June of 2019, she connected with Tracy Lindquist. Lindquist’s husband, Scott, was stationed at Fort Ord for two years in the 1980s. He has three types of rare cancers, including multiple myeloma. He had a stem cell transplant a few years back, and has been on chemotherapy since 2014.

He has health insurance through the VA, but when he applied for disability payments that would have allowed him to stop working, Tracy said, his claims were denied — twice.

Until May, he drove a van for $11 an hour, shuttling people with developmental disabilities from their group homes to daylong workshops. Sometimes he had to change the oil or do maintenance, and the physical labor was hard on him, Tracy said. Then he started having seizures, and could no longer drive. He tried working three days a week, cleaning the vans and assisting clients, but he couldn’t even manage that. Earlier this month, he was approved for Social Security disability payments.

“Scott hardly ever left the base and he drank water like a fish, and that water was contaminated,” Tracy said. “I know there are people out there, they’ve lost legs and arms, and they need to take care of those people who got hurt in action. But this is a disability, too.”

Debi Schoenrock, who lived around the corner from Akey’s house at Fort Ord, was diagnosed in 2009 with multiple myeloma at 47. Like Akey, she was stunned. She was a military wife and lived on base for three years, from 1990 until 1993. She’d never been sick, and had no family history of cancer. Nobody said anything about toxic substances, she said.

In 1991, the Army surveyed dozens of community members to find out what they knew about groundwater contamination at Fort Ord. Everyone said they were concerned, and no one reported receiving any information from the Army.

Five years later, a federal report assured them that “because the concentration of contamination detected in the past in Fort Ord and Marina drinking water wells was low and the duration was not over a lifetime (70-years), those exposures will not likely result in adverse health effects.”

Decades on, such health assessments at Fort Ord and other military bases are outdated and based on old science, said Burke of Johns Hopkins.

“A 1990s health assessment is a weak thing,” he said.

Peter deFur, a biologist who worked as an EPA-funded scientific adviser at the base, agrees. The report “stated that there could not be future health effects, which is not possible to know,” he said.

While the federal government has established acceptable standards for the amount of TCE in drinking water, no level of such carcinogens is safe, according to the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Complicating matters, TCE vaporizes easily, and when it is inhaled it can be even more dangerous, according to a National Toxicology Program assessment.

William Collins, who is leading Fort Ord’s cleanup for the Army, said he’s never heard of anyone sickened by pollution at the base. Like the VA, Collins points to the 25-year-old study that found no likely human risks from exposure at Fort Ord. He said anyone can request a new, updated study if they want, which is what happened at Camp Lejeune in 2017.

Federal health officials told the AP no one has done so at Fort Ord.

___

LeVonne Stone and her husband, Donald, were living at Fort Ord when the base shut down. LeVonne had a civilian job there, and Donald had been in the 7th Infantry Division.

During the base conversion, Stone formed the Fort Ord Environmental Justice Network, demanding answers about the toxic materials and the impact on friends and neighbors, who, at the time, made up the only significant Black community on California’s central coast. But she said military and state officials were determined to develop the valuable coastal property and, in her mind, didn’t want to deal with the pollution.

“We tried telling everybody, the state, the federal, everybody,” she said. “There’s so many people who have died of cancer. They have not done anything for the community locally. … They just turned their heads, they looked the other way.”

There have been efforts in recent years to force the government to come to grips with the effects of the military’s environmental abuses.

Numerous bills have been introduced seeking to compensate veterans sickened by exposure to toxic chemicals during their service, but nothing significant has passed.

Last year President Joe Biden called on the VA to examine the impact of burn pits and other airborne hazards. In November, the White House announced that soldiers exposed to burn pits in a handful of foreign countries, who developed any of three specific ailments — asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis — within 10 years can receive disability benefits.

The Board of Veterans Appeals has ruled repeatedly that there’s no presumptive service connection for any disease — stroke, cancer, vision problems, heart disorders and more — due to exposure to toxic chemicals at Fort Ord, according to an AP review of claims.

The VA told the AP that it is updating how it determines links between medical conditions and military service, and encourages veterans who believe their ailments may have been caused by their service to file a claim.

Burke, the Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said doing a study of health effects of living at Fort Ord now is difficult, if not impossible. “We can’t reproduce what happened on that base in California,” he said. “We need to admit we exposed people to a huge amount of toxic materials.”

And it’s not just a matter of exposures in the past.

Today Fort Ord is home to a small public university; some students live in former Army housing and spend weekends “Ording,” exploring the abandoned, and contaminated, military buildings. More than 1.5 million mountain bikers, hikers and horseback riders a year enjoy some 85 miles of trails in a vast national monument. Brand-new neighborhoods with million-dollar homes are being built across the street from the Superfund landfill cleanup. Local water officials say drinking water is now pulled from other areas and treated before being delivered to customers.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta grew up next to Fort Ord, went through basic training on the base and now runs a nonprofit institute there.

Too often, he said, the military does whatever is necessary at its bases to ready troops for war, “and they don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the implications of what will happen once they leave.”

Panetta said the military is abandoning communities, leaving huge messes to clean up.

“I think that they have every right to ask the question whether or not whatever physical ailments they may have was in part due to the failure to provide proper cleanup,” Panetta said. “And in those situations, there is liability. And somebody has to take care of people who have been adversely impacted.”

___

For Akey and other veterans with cancer, it’s a matter of accountability. Health insurance, disability benefits and an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, she said, “isn’t asking for too much.”

“You’re not just serving for six years, like me, and then you’re out,” she said. “If you’ve been given cancer, that’s a life sentence.”

On a recent foggy morning, Gandy, the former airplane mechanic, walked past the rusting hangar at the old airfield where he used to work. The single-landing strip and buildings are now the Marina Municipal Airport. But much of the legacy military infrastructure remains, including sheds with old paint cans, an oil separator the size of a school bus and disconnected nozzles and hoses.

Gandy became an outspoken activist along with LeVonne Stone, and also founded community groups to maintain pressure on the military to clean up the site.

His group repeatedly sued the Army, but a judge agreed with Defense Department attorneys who said the claims were moot because a rigorous cleanup was underway.

Gandy, now 70, said he talked to the base commanders, every mayor and health and safety officer. Twenty-five years later, Gandy’s comments — captured in videos and transcripts of contentious community meetings — seem prescient.

“I told them, ‘If we do what we need to do now, nobody will know that we did the right thing. But if we do it wrong, they’re going to know, because in about 20 years people are going to start dying,’” he said.

The AP obtained a roster of Gandy’s co-workers on a single day at the airfield in 1986. There were 46 pilots and welders, mechanics and radio engineers. Today, he was told, almost a third of them are dead, many of cancers and rare diseases, some in their 50s.

He knew three former colleagues had died, not 13. “I feel terrible,” he said, tearing up. “It breaks my heart. Those guys were good guys and they deserved better.”

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

The post What Lies Beneath: Vets worry polluted base made them ill first appeared on Federal News Network.

On his current mission, Stockwell helps students with assignments as a substitute science teacher at Alamogordo High School.

“You can’t act Army with these kids. You can’t speak the same way you would with another soldier with these kids. You can’t treat them the same way. You have to be careful with corrective actions,” he said with a laugh.

Dozens of National Guard Army and Air Force troops in New Mexico have been stepping in for an emergency unlike others they have responded to before: the shortage of teachers and school staff members that has tested the ability of schools nationwide to continue operating during the coronavirus pandemic.

While many other states and school districts issued pleas for substitute teachers amid omicron-driven surges in infections, New Mexico has been alone in calling out its National Guard members. In 36 of the state’s 89 school districts, guard members have traded in mission briefs for lesson plans to work for school systems.

When Stockwell first walked into the freshman science class, wearing camouflage fatigues and combat boots, some students thought he was just visiting, like a recruiter. Then he took a seat in the teacher’s chair.

“When he started taking attendance, I was like, ‘whoa,’” said Lilli Terrazas, 15, of Alamogordo. “I was kind of nervous because, like, you know — a man in a uniform. But it was cool. He helped me.”

Roughly 80 service members have volunteered to work in schools. The troops have gone through background checks and taken brief courses required for substitute teachers. As substitutes, they don’t have to learn much about curriculum, but they need to be attentive to students.

Stockwell has been filling in since late January when his students’ teacher moved to an administrative role in another school. One recent day, he shuffled through the rows of school desks, kneeling to meet students eye-to-eye as he helped them with assignments calculating the depth of the earth’s crust, and other layers of the planet.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called out the guard to help with the acute shortages in a state that like several others has struggled to find enough educators. At least 100 schools had reported closing down for at least one day this school year.

New Mexico saw a surge of teacher retirements last fall, and there are currently around 1,000 open teaching positions in a state with about 20,000 teachers. Grisham stressed the guard deployment is a temporary measure and state officials are working to bolster the teaching force and school staff through increased pay and other strategies.

At Alamogordo High School, the teacher shortage peaked on Jan. 13, when 30 teachers, about a third of the teaching staff, were out due to illness, professional training, or family emergencies.

“Everybody was enjoying their holiday and things like that, and then they came back and were sick,” said Raeh Burns, one of two Alamogordo High School secretaries tasked with filling teaching slots each morning. “I know I’m going to have Mr. Stockwell every morning and that he’s OK to go where I need him to go.”

In some communities, there have been concerns raised about soldiers going in classrooms. In Santa Fe, the school district was asked if soldiers would wear uniforms and carry guns, school district spokesperson Cody Dynarski said. Guns were always out of the question. The district decided that soldiers would wear civilian clothing.

Ultimately, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, two of the largest urban school districts, did not receive any soldiers despite their requests as the deployments have prioritized smaller and more rural school districts.

Elsewhere, when given the choice, some soldiers have opted for military fatigues over civilian clothes to command respect in the classroom, particularly if they’re not much older than their students.

“I think I look like an 18-year-old out of uniform,” said Cassandra Sierra, 22, of Roswell, N.M., who has served as a substitute teacher in a high school in Hobbs.

Sierra already works with kids in her day job as a student coordinator at a military boarding school in Roswell, which has given her an edge as a substitute.

“Kids just need patience,” she said. “I think I just have a lot of patience.”

At a middle school on Alamogordo’s Holloman Air Force Base, students are used to seeing people in uniform, but not in classrooms.

“I was like, ‘Oh, we have somebody in the uniform that’s going to teach us. That’s kinda awkward.’ It was weird,” said Andrew George, 12, of his computer classes led by a woman trained in combat and with experience leading a platoon overseas. “Once she introduced herself I was like ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be fun.’”

The substitute, Lt. Amanda Zollo, works in the 911 dispatch center in Albuquerque when she’s not training or serving with the guard. She kept students on task during a lesson about cybersecurity, as they created and then attempted to break each other’s passwords.

She was subbing for a teacher who was having trouble finding childcare. The principal, Whitney Anderson, said that having Zollo’s services meant that for the first time that week she didn’t have to take over a classroom herself.

Zollo doesn’t talk about her work as an infantry officer with her students, which, after a nervous laugh, she describes as “engaging with and destroying the enemies of the U.S. in close-quarter combat.”

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that it was the high school missing a third of teachers, not the entire district.

___

Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

The post National Guard deploys for new emergency: Teacher shortages first appeared on Federal News Network.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled 2-1 Wednesday to maintain a block on the mandate that a Texas-based federal judge had issued on Jan. 21. The administration had asked the New Orleans court for an injunction allowing the federal worker mandate to move forward pending appeal.

President Joe Biden announced in September that more than 3.5 million federal workers were required to undergo vaccination, with no option to get regularly tested instead, unless they secured approved medical or religious exemptions. The requirement kicked in this past November. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month that 98% of federal workers are vaccinated.

Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by then-President Donald Trump, issued an injunction against the requirement last month, saying the Biden administration exceeded its authority.

The 5th Circuit panel’s order didn’t address the merits of the case. It was a brief order by judges Jerry Smith and Don Willett putting off a decision on whether to lift the injunction pending further proceedings, and ordering the expedited filing of briefs.

Judge Stephen Higginson issued a 10-page dissent noting that a dozen other district judges had declined to block the rule. Higginson said many private businesses had adopted vaccine mandates, adding “the public interest is not served by a single … district judge, lacking public health expertise and made unaccountable through life tenure, telling the President of the United States, in his capacity as CEO of the federal workforce, that he cannot take the same lifesaving workplace safety measures as these private sector CEOs.”

Smith was nominated to the 5th Circuit by President Ronald Reagan; Willett, by Trump; and Higginson, by President Barack Obama.

The post Appeals court declines to overturn judge’s ban on federal employee vaccine mandate first appeared on Federal News Network.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced his intention to nominate Steven Cliff, who has served as deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since February, to become the agency’s administrator.

If confirmed by the Senate, Cliff would take over the agency at a crucial juncture. Highway deaths are rising, battery electric vehicles are upending the auto industry, and vehicle automation is spreading into more models.

NHTSA, which sets vehicle safety standards, finds safety defects, manages recalls and helps to develop government fuel economy requirements, has been without a confirmed administrator since Mark Rosekind left at the end of 2016. Auto safety advocates have been calling on Biden to make a nomination so a confirmed administrator can start moving on a safety agenda.

The announcement comes three days after The Associated Press reported that the agency is struggling with a growing backlog of safety rules ordered by Congress that are years overdue and could save thousands of lives. An AP review of rule-making by NHTSA under the last three presidents found at least 13 auto safety rules past due, including a rear seat belt reminder requirement passed by Congress in 2012 that was to be implemented by 2015.

The pending safety rules have been slowed by bureaucracy or taken a back seat to other priorities. President Donald Trump sidetracked at least four major road safety proposals that were in development during his term.

An estimated 38,680 people were killed in traffic crashes in 2020, the most since 2007, even though total miles driven dropped at the beginning of the pandemic. In the first three months of 2021, 8,730 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, a 10.5% increase from the same period last year.

Last year, over half of all crash fatalities involved unbelted drivers or occupants, the highest level since 2012, according to NHTSA.

Over 800 people who were unbelted in the back seat die each year in car crashes. An analysis of NHTSA’s data by a state governors’ safety group found that wearing seat belts would have saved over half of them.

Cliff joined NHTSA shortly after Biden’s inauguration. Before joining the agency, he was deputy executive officer at the California Air Resources Board, which regulates pollution in the state. He has held a number of positions with the agency and the California Department of Transportation, where he was assistant director for sustainability.

While he was deputy NHTSA administrator, the agency has grown more aggressive in regulating the auto industry. It has required that automakers and tech companies report crashes involving autonomous or partially automated driving systems. It also has forced electric vehicle sales leader Tesla Inc. to recall cars to fix touch screens that go blank, and it opened an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driver-assist system due to crashes into parked emergency vehicles.

Jason Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said the nomination is an important first step toward working to make roads safer. Under Cliff, NHTSA has “shown a renewed interest” in using enforcement and regulatory options to counter rising crash deaths, Levine said.

“We are hopeful that these early indications are indicative of delivering future safety gains for the public,” he said.

Also under Cliff, NHTSA has started the regulatory process to require automatic emergency braking systems be standard on passenger cars and heavy trucks. Levine said the agency has to do more to bring in current and potential technologies to make the roads safer.

NHTSA also confirmed it will bring on Duke University Professor Missy Cummings as a senior adviser for safety. Cummings has done studies on how humans interact with automated and partially automated vehicles. She’ll join the agency under a program that allows temporary assignments between federal, state and local governments.

The post Former Calif. regulator tapped to run highway safety agency first appeared on Federal News Network.

The COLA, as it’s commonly called, amounts to an added $92 a month for the average retired worker, according to estimates Wednesday from the Social Security Administration. It’s an abrupt break from a long lull in inflation that saw cost-of-living adjustments averaging just 1.65% a year over the past 10 years.

With the increase, the estimated average Social Security payment for a retired worker will be $1,657 a month next year. A typical couple’s benefits would rise by $154 to $2,753 per month.

But that’s just to help make up for rising costs that recipients are already paying for food, gasoline and other goods and services.

“It goes pretty quickly,” retiree Cliff Rumsey said of the cost-of-living increases. After a career in sales for a leading steel manufacturer, Rumsey lives near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He cares at home for his wife of nearly 60 years, Judy, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Since the coronavirus pandemic, Rumsey said he has also noted price increases for wages paid to caregivers who occasionally spell him and for personal care products for Judy.

The COLA affects household budgets for about 1 in 5 Americans. That includes Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees, nearly 70 million people in all. For baby boomers who embarked on retirement within the past 15 years, it will be the biggest increase they’ve seen.

Among them is Kitty Ruderman of Queens in New York City, who retired from a career as an executive assistant and has been collecting Social Security for about 10 years. “We wait to hear every year what the increase is going to be, and every year it’s been so insignificant,” she said. “This year, thank goodness, it will make a difference.”

Ruderman says she times her grocery shopping to take advantage of midweek senior citizen discounts, but even so price hikes have been “extreme.” She says she doesn’t think she can afford a medication that her doctor has recommended.

AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins called the government payout increase “crucial for Social Security beneficiaries and their families as they try to keep up with rising costs.”

Policymakers say the adjustment is a safeguard to protect Social Security benefits against the loss of purchasing power, and not a pay bump for retirees. About half of seniors live in households where Social Security provides at least 50% of their income, and one-quarter rely on their monthly payment for all or nearly all their income.

“You never want to minimize the importance of the COLA,” said retirement policy expert Charles Blahous, a former public trustee helping to oversee Social Security and Medicare finances. “What people are able to purchase is very profoundly affected by the number that comes out. We are talking the necessities of living in many cases.”

This year’s Social Security trustees report amplified warnings about the long-range financial stability of the program. But there’s little talk about fixes in Congress, with lawmakers’ consumed by President Joe Biden’s massive domestic legislation and partisan machinations over the national debt. Social Security cannot be addressed through the budget reconciliation process Democrats are attempting to use to deliver Biden’s promises.

Social Security’s turn will come, said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee and author of legislation to tackle shortfalls that would leave the program unable to pay full benefits in less than 15 years. His bill would raise payroll taxes while also changing the COLA formula to give more weight to health care expenses and other costs that weigh more heavily on the elderly. Larson said he intends to press ahead next year.

“This one-time shot of COLA is not the antidote,” he said.

Although Biden’s domestic package includes a major expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision care, Larson said he hears from constituents that seniors are feeling neglected by the Democrats.

“In town halls and tele-town halls they’re saying, ‘We are really happy with what you did on the child tax credit, but what about us?’” Larson added. “In a midterm election, this is a very important constituency.”

The COLA is only one part of the annual financial equation for seniors. An announcement about Medicare’s Part B premium they pay for outpatient care is expected soon. It’s usually an increase, so at least some of any Social Security raise gets eaten up by health care. The Part B premium is now $148.50 a month, and the Medicare trustees report estimated a $10 increase for 2022.

Economist Marilyn Moon, who also served as public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, said she believes the current spurt of inflation will be temporary, due to highly unusual economic circumstances.

“I would think there is going to be an increase this year that you won’t see reproduced in the future,” Moon said.

But policymakers should not delay getting to work on retirement programs, she said.

“We’re at a point in time where people don’t react to policy needs until there is a sense of desperation, and both Social Security and Medicare are programs that benefit from long-range planning rather short-range machinations,” she said.

Social Security is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers. Each pays 6.2% on wages up to a cap, which is adjusted each year for inflation. Next year the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes will increase to $147,000.

The financing scheme dates to the 1930s, the brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who believed a payroll tax would foster among average Americans a sense of ownership that would protect the program from political interference.

That argument still resonates. “Social Security is my lifeline,” said Ruderman, the New York retiree. “It’s what we’ve worked for.”

The post Social Security checks getting big boost as inflation rises first appeared on Federal News Network.

Over the last 10 years, the Social Security COLA has averaged about 1.7% annually as inflation remained low. But the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has triggered rising prices for a wide range of goods and services, and that’s expected to translate to bigger checks for retirees.

WHY ARE SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS ADJUSTED?

Policymakers say the COLA works to preserve the purchasing power of Social Security benefits, and shouldn’t be seen as a pay hike for retirees.

At one time Congress had to approve inflation increases, but starting in the mid-1970s lawmakers turned that function over to nonpartisan experts within the government bureaucracy. The annual review is now tied to changes in an official measure of inflation and proceeds automatically and with no political brinksmanship.

HOW BIG AN INCREASE FOR 2022?

Stay tuned.

The Great Recession saw a COLA increase of 5.8% for 2009, and the number for next year may rival that.

This summer, government economic experts predicted a COLA in the range of 6%. If that’s the case, it would be the biggest Social Security hike the vast majority of baby boomer retirees have seen. Up to now, they’ve collected meager to modest annual adjustments, not counting three years for which there was no COLA because inflation barely showed a pulse.

A 6% COLA would increase the average Social Security payment for a retired worker by close to $93 a month, to $1,636 next year. Compare that to this year’s COLA, worth only about $20 a month.

WHAT’S CHANGED OVER THE PAST YEAR?

As the economy recovers from the shock of coronavirus shutdowns, prices are rising at a pretty good clip.

Gas serves as an ever-present reminder, above $3 a gallon in most states, $4 a gallon in California and Hawaii. But food had already been going up and so are labor costs as employers compete to hire choosy workers seeking higher pay and better benefits. Add to the mix supply chain problems that have slowed deliveries of everything from refrigerators to running shoes.

All that gets sifted into the prices that consumers pay for their everyday needs.

WHO’S AFFECTED?

The COLA is big enough to have an impact on the overall economy.

It affects the household budgets of about 1 in 5 Americans, including Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees, about 70 million people.

About half of seniors live in households where Social Security benefits account for at least 50% of their income, and one-quarter rely on their monthly payment for all or nearly all their earnings. For this latter group, the COLA can literally make a difference in what they’re able to put on the table.

DO PRIVATE PENSIONS ALSO PROVIDE A COLA?

Inflation protection is central to Social Security’s benefit design, but it’s not so common among traditional private pensions. Benefits paid by most employer plans gradually lose some of their purchasing power over the years.

Social Security not only increases retiree checks to compensate for inflation, but it then adds that amount to a person’s underlying benefit so it grows with compounding as future COLAs are factored in.

CAN SOCIAL SECURITY AFFORD TO KEEP PAYING COLAs?

Proposals have been floated both to increase or trim back COLAs in the context of a broader Social Security overhaul. Many advocates for older people argue that the inflation index currently used does not adequately reflect the higher health care costs faced by the aging.

On the other side, groups pressing to reduce federal deficits urge switching to an alternate inflation measure that factors in consumers’ habit of substituting cheaper goods when prices rise. That would yield slightly lower estimates of cost-of-living changes.

Social Security trustees said in their report this year that the program’s long-term fiscal imbalance is casting a longer shadow.

For the first time in 39 years, the cost of delivering benefits will exceed Social Security’s total income from payroll tax collections and interest. From here on in, Social Security will have to tap its savings to pay full benefits.

The report also moved up the exhaustion date for Social Security’s massive trust fund by one year, to 2034. At that point, the program will be able to pay only 78% of scheduled benefits, the report said.

Such a reduction would represent a major hardship for most people who depend on Social Security, even middle-class retirees.

But hardly anyone with political power in Washington is talking about fixes.

“Social Security is an issue that really needs to be addressed together by both parties,” said David Certner, legislative policy director at AARP. “It is very difficult to do bipartisan work on something as big and important as Social Security in what is a very partisan atmosphere.”

The post EXPLAINER: Why Social Security COLA will jump next year first appeared on Federal News Network.

Biden signed into law a bill to make Juneteenth, or June 19, the 12th federal holiday. The House voted 415-14 on Wednesday to send the bill to Biden, while the Senate passed the bill unanimously the day before.

“This is a day of profound weight and profound power, a day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take,” Biden said.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas — two months after the Confederacy had surrendered. That was also about 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Southern states.

It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983. One of the federal holidays, Inauguration Day, happens every four years.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is the human resources office for the federal government, tweeted Thursday that most federal employees will observe the new holiday — Juneteenth National Independence Day — on Friday since June 19 falls on a Saturday this year.

Biden noted the overwhelming support for the bill from lawmakers in both parties. He had run for president promising to unite the country and work with Republicans, but his first major legislation to provide more COVID relief to American consumers and businesses was passed along party lines and he has struggled to unite lawmakers to support a major public works bill.

“I hope this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another,” Biden said.

Biden signed the legislation surrounded by members of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the lead sponsors of the legislation in the Senate, Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and John Cornyn, R-Texas. He was introduced by Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation’s first African-American vice president.

“We have come far and we have far to go, but today is a day of celebration,” Harris said.

The White House moved quickly to hold the signing ceremony after the House debated the bill and then voted for it Wednesday.

“Our federal holidays are purposely few in number and recognize the most important milestones,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. “I cannot think of a more important milestone to commemorate than the end of slavery in the United States.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, speaking next to a large poster of a Black man whose back bore massive scarring from being whipped, said she would be in Galveston on Saturday to celebrate along with Cornyn.

“Can you imagine?” said Jackson Lee. “I will be standing maybe taller than Sen. Cornyn, forgive me for that, because it will be such an elevation of joy.”

The Senate passed the bill Tuesday under a unanimous consent agreement that expedites the process for considering legislation. It takes just one senator’s objection to block such agreements.

The vote comes as lawmakers struggle to overcome divisions on police reform legislation following the killing of George Floyd by police and as Republican state legislators push what experts say is an unprecedented number of bills aimed at restricting access to the ballot box. While Republicans say the goal is to prevent voter fraud, Democrats contend that the measures are aimed at undermining minority voting rights.

Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus went to the floor Wednesday to speak in favor of the bill. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., said she viewed Juneteenth as a commemoration rather than a celebration because it represented something that was delayed in happening.

“It also reminds me of what we don’t have today,” she said. “And that is full access to justice, freedom and equality. All these are often in short supply as it relates to the Black community.”

Some Republican lawmakers opposed the effort. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., said creating the federal holiday was an effort to celebrate “identity politics.”

“Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no,” he said in a press release.

The vast majority of states recognize Juneteenth as a holiday or have an official observance of the day, and most states hold celebrations. Juneteenth is a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington.

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., said he would vote for the bill and that he supported the establishment of a federal holiday, but he was upset that the name of the holiday included the word “independence” rather than “emancipation.”

“Why would the Democrats want to politicize this by coopting the name of our sacred holiday of Independence Day?” Higgins asked.

Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., replied, “I want to say to my white colleagues on the other side: Getting your independence from being enslaved in a country is different from a country getting independence to rule themselves.”

She added, “We have a responsibility to teach every generation of Black and white Americans the pride of a people who have survived, endured and succeeded in these United States of America despite slavery.”

The 14 House Republicans who voted against the bill are Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Ronny Jackson of Texas, Doug LaMalfa of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom McClintock of California, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Mike Rogers of Alabama, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Chip Roy of Texas and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin.

The post Biden signs bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday first appeared on Federal News Network.

The House voted 415-14 Wednesday to make Juneteenth, or June 19th, the 12th federal holiday. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk, and he is expected to sign it into law.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas — two months after the Confederacy had surrendered. That was also about 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Southern states.

It’s the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created in 1983.

“Our federal holidays are purposely few in number and recognize the most important milestones,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. “I cannot think of a more important milestone to commemorate than the end of slavery in the United States.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, speaking next to a large poster of a Black man whose back bore massive scarring from being whipped, said she would be in Galveston this Saturday to celebrate along with Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

“Can you imagine?” said the rather short Jackson Lee. “I will be standing maybe taller than Sen. Cornyn, forgive me for that, because it will be such an elevation of joy.”

The Senate passed the bill a day earlier under a unanimous consent agreement that expedites the process for considering legislation. It takes just one senator’s objection to block such agreements.

“Please, let us do as the Senate. Vote unanimously for passage,” Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., pleaded with his colleagues.

The vote comes as lawmakers struggle to overcome divisions on police reform legislation following the killing of George Floyd by police and as Republican state legislators push what experts say is an unprecedented number of bills aimed at restricting access to the ballot box. While Republicans say the goal is to prevent voter fraud, Democrats contend that the measures are aimed at undermining minority voting rights.

Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the floor to speak in favor of the bill. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., said she viewed Juneteenth as a commemoration rather than a celebration because it represented something that was delayed in happening.

“It also reminds me of what we don’t have today,” she said. “And that is full access to justice, freedom and equality. All these are often in short supply as it relates to the Black community.”

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and had 60 co-sponsors. Democratic leaders moved quickly to bring the bill to the House floor after the Senate’s vote the day before.

Some Republican lawmakers opposed the effort. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., said creating the federal holiday was an effort to celebrate “identity politics.”

“Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no,” he said in a press release.

The vast majority of states recognize Juneteenth as a holiday or have an official observance of the day, and most states hold celebrations. Juneteenth is a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington.

Under the legislation, the federal holiday would be known as Juneteenth National Independence Day.

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., said that he would vote for the bill and that he supported the establishment of a federal holiday, but he was upset that the name of the holiday included the word “independence” rather than “emancipation.”

“Why would the Democrats want to politicize this by coopting the name of our sacred holiday of Independence Day?” Higgins asked.

Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., replied, “I want to say to my white colleagues on the other side: Getting your independence from being enslaved in a country is different from a country getting independence to rule themselves.”

She added, “We have a responsibility to teach every generation of Black and white Americans the pride of a people who have survived, endured and succeeded in these United States of America despite slavery.”

The 14 House Republicans who voted against the bill were Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Ronny Jackson of Texas, Doug LaMalfa of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom McClintock of California, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Mike Rogers of Alabama, Rosendale of Montana, Chip Roy of Texas and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin.

The post Congress approves bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday first appeared on Federal News Network.