Reliability for Ratepayers Act
The Reliability for Ratepayers Act would give the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) substantially more flexibility to set and update employee compensation and to hire staff, including senior executives, outside most normal federal civil service rules. The bill requires BPA to develop an initial compensation plan within one year of enactment, updated annually, with input from the Office of Personnel Management and approval by the Secretary of Energy. It also authorizes BPA to exempt itself from several civil service laws to recruit and retain staff more effectively, including physicians and outside experts, while maintaining some merit-based principles. Public reporting would accompany these changes, including disclosures if salaries would exceed certain federal pay levels. The underlying goal is to address retention and hiring challenges at BPA and, by extension, support reliable electricity service for ratepayers.
Key Points
- 1Establishes an Employee Compensation Program for BPA that fixes and specifies compensation (salary, bonuses, benefits, incentives, etc.) for BPA employees, including Senior Executive Service members.
- 2Requires an initial compensation plan within one year of enactment, developed with the Director of the Office of Personnel Management and subject to approval by the Secretary of Energy; the plan must then be implemented within one year of its development.
- 3Compensation plan must be based on a survey of prevailing compensation for similar positions in the public electric sector, align with BPA’s budget, and consider education, experience, responsibility, geographic differences, and retention/recruitment needs; compensation must be competitive with consumer-owned utilities in the Western Interconnection.
- 4Mandates an annual review/update of the compensation plan, with ongoing oversight of the administrator’s compensation, and public disclosure in BPA’s quarterly public reviews, including any salaries exceeding the Executive Schedule Level IV cap.
- 5Requires annual publication of the compensation plan or updates to it.
- 6Allows BPA to appoint officers and employees and to hire laborers, mechanics, and workers for construction and operations, and to fix their compensation consistent with the compensation plan.
- 7Exempts BPA from several civil service laws (Chapters 34, 43, 51, 53, 57, and 59 of Title 5) to enable flexible hiring and pay, while preserving merit system principles where applicable; permits hiring physicians and outside experts without civil service constraints.
- 8Keeps some oversight and alignment with civil service principles and requires ongoing transparency to protect ratepayers’ interests.