No pay for two-day furlough at Transportation

About 2,000 Transportation Department employees will not be reimbursed for their two-day furloughs after being caught in a congressional dispute over spending last week.

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked a bill to extend unemployment benefits and highway funding because it added $10 billion to the deficit. That meant Transportation didn't have the funds to pay employees at the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

Bunning relented after being highly criticized for his block and allowed a vote approving the bill March 2. The employees returned to work the next day, but Transportation spokeswoman Lori Irving said the bill did not provide funds to reimburse them for the two days they had off.

DoD goal: Limit use of Social Security numbers

The Pentagon is preparing to launch a militarywide effort to reduce the use of Social Security numbers to lower the chances of identity theft for military and civilian employees and contractors.

But the announcement in the March 3 Federal Register makes clear that completely halting the use of Social Security numbers is not feasible.

The SSN is a prize to identity thieves, but it also has become ingrained in various military uses that can't be fully eliminated, Defense Department officials said. They propose new regulations calling for a complete review of military records and reports to determine when the number isn't necessary.

From 1969 to 1974, Social Security numbers gradually replaced service numbers as the main identifier and authenticator of military personnel.

Expanded use of SSNs has increased efficiency and reduced errors in records transactions, but the threat of identity theft "has rendered this widespread use unacceptable," Defense officials said.

The proposed regulation, open for comment until May 3, says SSNs remain acceptable for some uses, such as for employment and tax purposes, security clearance investigations, and computer matching with other government agencies, and as the primary form of identification for Geneva Conventions purposes.

For all other purposes, the proposed regulation directs a review of every case of SSN usage in military records to determine if an alternative is possible.

If a particular usage can be dropped, it will be. If an identifier is needed but it doesn't have to be the SSN, an alternative will be used. If no viable alternative is available, a flag or general officer or a Senior Executive Service member would have to authorize use of the SSN.

Pentagon police officers wounded in shooting

An anti-government extremist wounded two Pentagon police officers last week in a shooting at the Pentagon Metro station before he was shot and killed.

The two officers, Jeff Amos and Marvin Carraway, were lightly wounded in the March 4 shooting, and were treated and released at George Washington University Hospital. The shooter, John Patrick Bedell, died at the hospital from a gunshot wound to the head.

Bedell left behind a blog that expressed fears about the federal government, including a belief that the government staged the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Authorities say Bedell worked alone; they're still trying to establish a motive for the shooting.

This was the second anti-government attack in two weeks; a Texas man flew his small plane into the IRS building in Austin on Feb. 18, and left behind a note railing against the federal government.

TSA to roll Austin plane crash into terror review

The Transportation Security Administration will review the fiery crash of a small plane into an IRS office building and use that information to shape future anti-terrorism regulations for the nation's 220,000 private airplanes.

The review is the first in which the TSA has studied a crash involving a private plane. It comes as the agency undertakes a controversial plan to regulate private planes, which currently don't face TSA security requirements, such as passenger screening.

TSA assistant administrator John Sammon said the agency is hiring an aviation expert to study reports by the FBI and other agencies on the Feb. 18 crash in Austin, Texas, which killed two.

JFK controller suspended for allowing son in tower

Two Federal Aviation Administration employees have been suspended after an air traffic controller allowed his son to talk to pilots from the tower at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The controller and his supervisor were suspended after audiotapes of his son talking to departing flights were posted on the Internet. Randy Babbitt, the FAA administrator, said the controller also allowed his daughter to visit the air traffic control tower the next day. Both actions were violations of FAA policies; visitors are allowed into control towers only with FAA approval.

The boy gave simple commands to pilots — "JetBlue 171 cleared for takeoff," for example — and his father handled more complicated instructions.

This wasn't the first high-profile lapse in the JFK tower: After a small plane collided with a helicopter in August, killing nine people, tapes revealed that the controller was on the phone with a friend instead of directing traffic.

SSA reduces hearings backlog

The Social Security Administration's pending disability hearings backlog is at its lowest level since June 2005, Commissioner Michael Astrue announced in a March 2 news release.

SSA currently has 697,437 pending hearings, and Astrue credited the hiring of 147 administrative law judges and more than 1,000 support staff in fiscal 2009 with helping to reduce the backlog. The average hearing decision processing time has also dropped to 442 days, down from a high of 514 days at the end of fiscal 2008.

"We have decreased the number of hearings pending by almost 10 percent over the last 14 months and cut the time it takes to make a decision by nearly 2½ months.This remarkable progress shows our backlog reduction plan is working," Astrue said.

SSA plans to hire 226 more ALJs this year and open 14 new hearing offices and three satellite offices.

Body scanners headed to 11 major airports

Eleven major airports will begin using body scanners to screen passengers as the Transportation Security Administration launches a plan to buy 1,000 of the machines over the next two years.

The scanners can look under passengers' clothing in order to detect weapons and explosives.

Boston Logan International Airport received one new scanner last week and will get two more this week. All will go into the same terminal. Among the other airports getting the scanners are Los Angeles International, Chicago O'Hare and Charlotte, N.C., Douglas International.

TSA bought 150 scanners in September using $25 million from the federal stimulus package. It plans to buy 300 more this year and 500 next year. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered the installation accelerated after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of an airliner over Detroit.

The scanners, made by California-based Rapiscan, are 9 feet long and 6 feet wide, much larger than metal detectors. Airport screeners view images from the machines in a nearby closed room.

The new scanners will bring the total number of airports with the machines to 29. That includes 17 of the nation's 30 largest airports.

In some places, Census jobs unfilled

The Census Bureau is having trouble finding qualified temporary workers in some neighborhoods despite the record number of jobless people.

Census already has recruited 3 million potential workers for the 1.2 million jobs needed to conduct the 2010 Census. But meeting the goal of hiring workers in the neighborhoods where they live is a challenge in some places.

On the south side of Hartford, Conn., for example, the bureau has plenty of applicants but not the ones they need: people who speak Polish, Russian, Urdu, Hindi, Korean or Vietnamese. On the north side, an upscale area, it can't find people who need jobs that pay $15 to $22.75 an hour.

The Census Bureau needs 3.8 million people in its pool of eligible workers by the end of April. It needs many more people to apply for every job because some don't do well on a test, fail the background check or aren't willing to work the hours they're assigned.

"Some will come to the recruiting session and leave," says Bruce Kaminski, deputy regional director for the Boston region. "Some people will show up for training and not show up the second day."

More Bush administration appointees ‘burrow in'

Almost twice as many Bush administration political appointees switched to federal career positions — a practice known as "burrowing in" — in the administration's second term as did in the first term, according to a new report.

The Government Accountability Office found that 143 political appointees at 26 agencies took career federal jobs between May 2005 and May 2009. During Bush's first term, the figure was 77.

Of those who switched to career jobs in the second term, most were in the Justice Department, which had 32 conversions; followed by the Homeland Security Department, with 18; and the Defense Department, with 13. Twenty-five of those who converted to career positions took jobs in the Senior Executive Service.

"Burrowing in" is a controversial practice — the conversions often bypass the normal application process — and one that happens in virtually every election year.

The Office of Personnel Management issued a memo in November that promised to crack down on the practice.

New leadership succession plan at DoD

Who would act as Defense secretary if Robert Gates, 66, died or resigned and his deputy, Bill Lynn, couldn't do it? President Obama decided the Army secretary — a position now held by John McHugh— should get the job.

Obama's little-noticed March 1 executive order reverses President Bush's doomsday plan, which bumped the service secretaries and elevated loyal advisers to fill in for then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Under the December 2005 order, the Pentagon's intelligence chief was third in line to be defense secretary. At the time, the position was held by Rumsfeld insider Stephen Cambone.

Bush had moved the Army secretary to No. 6 in the line of succession. Now, if Gates and Lynn were unable to fulfill their duties, next in line would be the Army secretary, followed by the Navy and Air Force secretaries. The undersecretary of Defense for intelligence drops to No. 9.

No. 2 Air Force civilian leader confirmed

The Air Force has an No. 2 civilian leader for the first time since August 2007.

The Senate confirmed Erin Conaton as undersecretary of the Air Force on March 4 after months of political wrangling.

Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, the two Republican senators from Alabama, had placed holds on her nomination because they were upset over the Air Force's handling of the KC-X tanker competition, among other things. The holds were lifted without explanation.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier that day, Sessions told Air Force Secretary Michael Donley that he was still upset about the tanker competition and that "this [was] not going to go away."

Sessions spokeswoman Sarah Haley declined to comment on why the holds were lifted. Shelby's office could not be reached for comment.

Conaton was nominated by President Obama on Nov. 10.

Frank Kendall III's nomination as principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition also was confirmed March 4. It had been held up by the Alabama senators as well.