Sponsors
Introduced January 28, 2025 by Michael F. Bennet · Last progress January 28, 2025
The bill delivers substantial pay, benefit, health‑care, and survivor‑support improvements for federal wildland (and some structural) firefighters — enhancing recruitment, retention, and worker safety — at the cost of sizable fiscal and administrative burdens, some benefit‑limiting caps, and implementation/privacy risks that could blunt or unevenly distribute the gains.
Federal wildland (and some structural) firefighters nationwide receive substantially higher and more-targeted pay: large base-pay increases for GS and prevailing‑rate firefighters, a very large deployment premium (450% daily) subject to caps, CPI‑indexed annual raises, hazard‑duty differentials, recruitment/retention bonuses, housing allowances for deployments, and tuition assistance — raising pay
Federal wildland firefighters and their families gain strengthened health and safety supports: centralized casualty case management and notification, paid rest-and-recovery after qualifying incidents, a mandated, unlimited mental‑health program plus seven consecutive paid mental‑health leave days per year, recognition of PTSD and certain occupational diseases by OWCP, expanded claims staff, and a公
Improved long‑term retirement and benefits access for many firefighters: rules to obtain retirement credit for prior firefighter service (including counting qualifying overtime as basic pay going forward), separate OPM accounting for firefighter normal costs, and parity efforts for structural firefighters to receive comparable pay/benefits.
Taxpayers and federal budgets bear materially higher personnel and retirement costs: elevated base pay, premium pay, indexed raises, bonuses, housing allowances, expanded OWCP staffing, and new program implementation will increase annual outlays and long‑term retirement liabilities.
Key pay elements are constrained or treated in ways that can blunt intended benefits for some employees: annual caps (including a $9,000 premium cap and Executive‑Schedule caps), capping premium calculations at GS‑10 step 10 for higher‑paid workers, and classifying some premium pay as non‑basic (excluding it from retirement, leave lump sums, overtime/minimum‑wage calculations) can reduce both near
Workers face substantial up‑front out‑of‑pocket costs to secure retroactive retirement credit: employees must pay retroactive employee deductions/deposits (with interest) to obtain past service credit, and cannot use TSP to make up retroactive amounts — a potentially large financial burden for affected individuals.
Based on analysis of 20 sections of legislative text.
Creates new pay/rate increases, incident premium pay, retirement credit rules, disease tracking, mental‑health and casualty assistance, paid R&R and mental‑health leave, bonuses, housing allowances, and tuition aid for federal wildland firefighters.
Creates a package of pay, retirement, health, leave, mental‑health, data, and family‑support reforms for Federal wildland firefighters and certain Federal wildland fire support personnel. It establishes special base pay rates and new premium pay for incident response, adds paid rest-and-recuperation and mental‑health leave, expands retirement credit rules and overtime counting for retirement, requires a public cancer and cardiovascular disease database, and creates a casualty assistance program and other benefit/administrative changes to speed claims and support families.