District of Columbia: Compensation Simplification Contracting Requirements

The District of Columbia Appropriations Act of 2001 provided $250,000 for a contract to study and develop a plan to simplify the compensation systems, schedules, and work rules for DC government employees. The act placed several conditions on the appropriation, one of which was that GAO review the proposed solicitation for the contract to ensure that it adequately addressed all of the elements stipulated in the act. Government officials initially told GAO that they planned to apply the $250,000 payment to existing contracts that were being used in the District's independent effort to reform its classification and compensation systems--and therefore would not carry out the conditions that Congress had set for receipt of the funds. More recently, however, the officials said that they no longer plan to use the funds because doing so would delay the District's reform effort.