Sponsors (25)
The bill standardizes and accelerates federal personnel adjudications and creates tools to recover improper payments—trading faster, clearer agency action and potential taxpayer savings for reduced employee procedural protections, increased risk of sudden pay or benefit losses, and implementation burdens on agencies.
Federal employees and supervisors will face faster, clearer personnel and disciplinary procedures (shorter, standardized notice/response timelines, defined appeal windows, and clarified decision factors), reducing prolonged uncertainty and speeding resolution of adverse actions.
Taxpayers and agencies gain mechanisms to recover improper payments and limit annuity payments for felonious service, potentially saving public funds and allowing consistent recoupment procedures.
Senior Executive Service (SES) and other positions that require training or licensing get longer probation/evaluation windows, giving agencies more time to assess competence and (potentially) improve long-term leadership quality.
Federal employees broadly lose procedural protections and appeal avenues (narrowed decision factors, channeling actions into different procedures, removal of chapter protections), making it easier and quicker for agencies to take adverse personnel actions.
Many employees face increased immediate financial risk — demotions, reduced pay, suspensions without pay, emergency furloughs, and potential annuity credit losses — creating possible sudden income loss and long-term retirement reductions.
Longer probationary periods (including an added year for some SES appointees and extended probation for training/licensure positions) prolong job uncertainty and may deter qualified candidates from accepting federal roles.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Lengthens federal probationary periods, tightens and shortens timelines for adverse actions and furloughs, creates supervisor-specific discipline rules, adds a felonious-service annuity denial process, and authorizes bonus recoupment.
Official title: To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for an alternative removal for performance or misconduct for Federal employees.
Introduced January 23, 2025 by Barry D. Loudermilk · Last progress January 23, 2025
Makes broad changes to federal personnel law that lengthen probationary periods for many hires (including Senior Executive Service members), reshape procedures and timelines for performance- and misconduct-based actions, create special disciplinary rules for supervisors, tighten furlough and emergency furlough rules, add a process to deny retirement credit for "felonious service," repeal a former performance statute, and provide authority to recoup bonuses. Most changes shift procedural rights and deadlines, give agencies more defined authority to take adverse action faster, and require OPM to issue implementing regulations for several parts. The law generally takes effect one year after enactment, with some provisions tied to OPM rulemaking or earlier deadlines (e.g., 180 days for furlough rulemaking).