(Washington) - AFGE thanks Representatives Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and John Sarbanes (D-MD), in the House of Representatives, and Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), in the Senate, for leading the bicameral effort to show strong support for the suspension of the OMB Circular A-76 process, elimination of direct conversions, and establishment of insourcing policies so that federal employees can perform new and outsourced work. All three policy changes are included in both the House and Senate versions of the FY09 Financial Services Appopriations Bill, which will be conferenced shortly.
"The Mikulski and Van Hollen-Sarbanes sign-on letters further strengthen two of our other champions, House and Senate Financial Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chairmen Jose Serrano (D-NY) and Richard Durbin (D-IL), who have worked so hard to make the sourcing process more accountable to taxpayers and less unfair to federal employees," declared AFGE National President John Gage.
"The Van Hollen and Mikulski letters provide an excellent foundation in the next Congress to, among other things, ensure the appropriate broadening of the definition of "inherently governmental"; the establishment of detailed and comprehensive contractor inventories; the incremental insourcing of workload that is inherently governmental, closely related to inherently governmental, and `commercial critical'; and the implementation of policies to ensure that insourcing can occur as easily as outsourcing."
The Mikulski letter was signed on to by 20 Senators. The Van Hollen-Sarbanes letter was signed on to by 108 Representatives.