Sponsors (5)
The bill improves pay, paid rest, and consistent deployment rules for federal wildland firefighters—boosting recovery, retention, and pay—but does so at the cost of higher near-term and ongoing payroll expenses, potential staffing strain during peak fires, and by diverting limited IIJA balances with attendant budgeting complications.
Federal wildland firefighters will keep higher base and premium pay and an ongoing overtime-cap waiver, preserving higher take-home pay and helping recruitment and retention.
Wildland firefighters receive paid rest/recuperation after long deployments (with pay treated like annual leave, including for intermittent/seasonal employees), improving recovery and reducing fatigue-related risks.
The Agriculture and Interior Secretaries must adopt joint, uniform deployment and rest policies, creating consistent standards across agencies and reducing administrative confusion.
Making the overtime-cap waiver permanent and continuing pay increases can raise ongoing federal payroll costs paid by taxpayers and may perpetuate reliance on overtime instead of addressing staffing or structural pay solutions.
Shifting up to $5 million from unobligated IIJA balances to fund these pay measures may reduce resources for other infrastructure projects and complicate planning for programs originally intended to use those funds.
Providing paid post-deployment rest increases near-term personnel costs for the agencies, which could strain budgets or force reallocation of funds.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Establishes paid rest-and-recuperation leave for federal wildland firefighters, allows up to $5M transfer to continue firefighter pay increases, and makes overtime-waiver language permanent.
Official title: Amend title 5, United States Code, to provide rest and recuperation leave for employees engaged in wildland firefighting, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress March 26, 2026
Creates paid "rest and recuperation" leave for federal wildland firefighters employed by the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, sets uniform deployment and rest-period policies, and makes technical and funding fixes to keep prior firefighter pay increases and overtime-waiver authorities in place. It allows up to $5 million in transfers to continue a previously authorized base salary increase and edits an emergency overtime-cap waiver statute to make certain calendar-year references permanent and corrects minor wording.