The Office of Personnel Management is advising agencies to keep the pay of senior political officials, such as the vice president and other political appointees, at frozen 2013 rates through the duration of the shutdown, rather than increasing pay for 2019.

This memo, issued Jan. 4, 2019, contradicts previous guidance issued by OPM at the end of 2018, which, in the absence of legislative mandate, called for ending the freeze on senior political official pay starting with the first pay period in 2019.

Senior official pay was frozen at 2013 levels and renewed under each annual appropriations since, but the freeze was set to expire in 2019, as Congress failed to pass general government appropriations for the year.

The Trump administration came under fire for opting to raise the pay of senior officials by around $10,000 while hundreds of thousands of federal employees are furloughed or working without pay under the partial government shutdown.

President Donald Trump also issued an executive order Dec. 28, 2018, that instituted a freeze on pay for most career federal employees in 2019.

When asked about the raise senior administration officials were set to receive, Trump told reporters at a Rose Garden press briefing Jan. 4 that likely most of those officials didn’t even know they would be getting a raise and that he would consider asking those officials to give the money back for the duration of the shutdown.

In the newest memo, acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert wrote that “it would be prudent for agencies to continue to pay these senior political officials at the frozen rate” until Congress issues guidance on that pay for 2019. Such guidance would most likely occur in the appropriations bills lawmakers are currently struggling to pass.

According to the memo, OPM guidance on the senior political official pay freeze for 2018 is generally applicable to continuing the pay freeze in 2019.

Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.

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