To amend section 5545 of title 5, United States Code, to provide hazard pay for carrying out prescribed burns, and for other purposes.

This bill, H.R. 5091, would add a new provision to 5 U.S.C. 5545 to provide hazard pay for federal employees performing prescribed burns and for smokejumper parachute jumps. Specifically, it would treat ignition, control, or suppression of prescribed burns, and parachute jumps by smokejumper firefighters (for training, proficiency, or operations) as duties involving unusual physical hardship or hazard, granting a pay differential equal to the differential used for fighting forest and range fires on the fireline. The bill also requires the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to issue implementing regulations within 90 days and sets the effective date to apply to pay periods after the earlier of regulatory issuance or 90 days after enactment. It includes a sense-of-Congress statement about the importance of prescribed fire work and smokejumper duties and includes a construction clause to preserve existing pay designations unless necessary to implement the new duties. In short, the bill would formally recognize the risk of prescribed-burn work and related smokejumper activities and would raise federal pay for those duties to the same level as frontline forest and range fire fighting pay, once regulations are in place.