CFAA Agreement

The feds haven’t paid their bills from last year. If they keep playing stupid games they will find themselves in a precarious position. In the end it’s the citizens and boots on the ground that will suffer the most.

2 Likes

They have not paid the Bill’s, however they also were over billed by some departments. Let’s just the process work and hope both parties can work it out.

4 Likes

Good for you! Nice work!

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article232788192.html

This should close this subject

3 Likes

Well they only have one USFS IC in R5. So shouldn’t be hard to track him and the note down.

You did the right thing to report this.

I remain neutral until I read the email. Not very likely they will use local agreements since they spent the last 3 years changing local agreements for local area response only and now all Fed regions are going away from using local agreements to mob IMT members.

The note might have been related to pay restrictions when an IMT is in staging.

Finally, it would be smart to clarify which fed agencies are not paying bills. Lumping is not a good option.

3 Likes

Those of us that have a “Dog in this fight” Also hope it’s not true. Going back to my Tiki Bar!

3 Likes

Well then the feds shouldn’t sign the contract.

Or local government should not over bill!

3 Likes

They only bill what is in the contract and salary survey. The feds dropped the forest AOP contracts like a bad habit years ago, and forced these IMT positions to go through the CFAA. They got what they asked for and now they are mad about it.

4 Likes

You should site specific agencies and not lump all local gov together, throwing stones is unproductive.

4 Likes

From a historical perspective, what was the intent of the author(s) when the CFAA was originally written and have the changes altered the contract to the point that today it is no longer in line with the intent of its origins? I think the intent is often lost upon the loop hole finders of the world. No matter if you are a contractor, Fed (yes it’s broad), State or Local, if you fall back to the intent of the contract, if you have integrity and do the right thing, by and far you are going to be good to go. If an individual is working within a situation where a binding contract is in place there are avenues to ensure the contract is followed. If an agency chooses to falsify documents that would cause them to be wrongfully paid…well, that’s fraud, pretty sure regardless of your agency affiliation there is a fix to that as well.

LG uses a composite wage (Average) when filing the annual salary schedule. The FS objected to this practice citing over payment of lower paid employees but did not object to the underpayment of higher paid employees in the same classification . The FS wanted individual pay versus composite. This creates a ton of work and potenally createse problems with paying for volunteer organizations.
Overbilling is not an accurate statement in general (although a few agencies have been challenged on their rate practices) but this would have been a change in past practice that is memorialized in the agreement.

5 Likes

Any further on this? Was it referring only to hurricane/FEMA assignments?
Anyone…Bueller??

CFAA expires in less than one month. Any word on negotiations or an extension?

4 Likes

Last we heard the forest service was going to pretend the audit didn’t happen until December, 2019. Now hearing they will extend the current agreement and pretend the audit didn’t happen until April, 2020.

1 Like

What audit? And why April?

I suspect a few understaffed fires due to lack of compensation ought to get politicians making noise real fast.

5 Likes

Not hearing anything from there discussions. They monitor this website to see if they’re getting leaks.

If any hears anything on how negotiations are going, please let us know.

I am trying to figure out how the feds think the process oes is using for negotiations will be any different from last spring.

2 Likes

Vallejo believes that if they ignore the problem long enough, it will go away. I still tend to believe that the way this is heading, we are going to see bifurcation of incidents in which CalFire and OES will assume responsibility, management and ordering for only those portions of the incident which are SRA or LRA. We saw the beginnings of that exact condition on the Soberanes Fire whereby once the fire was no longer a SRA threat, CalFire removed all of its resources and management team.

2 Likes

Interesting concept. A number of homes and small communities are within fed DPA. Something will have to change.

My department hasn’t committed to mobilizing if CFAA is changed significantly. We do know we’re one of the targets.

2 Likes