Sponsors (5)
The bill extends hazard-pay coverage and speeds implementation for federal smokejumpers and wildfire crews performing prescribed burns and parachute jumps, improving pay clarity and timing for high-risk duties while increasing federal payroll costs and creating short-term administrative and scope-dispute risks.
Federal smokejumpers and other federal wildfire firefighters would receive a hazard pay differential for prescribed-burn duties and parachute jumps, increasing compensation for high-risk work.
OPM is required to issue implementing regulations within 90 days, accelerating implementation so pay differentials and any back pay reach affected workers sooner.
The bill clarifies that prescribed burns are included and defines the term, reducing administrative ambiguity about which land-management burns qualify for differential pay.
Expanding hazard pay to cover prescribed burns and parachute jumps will increase federal payroll costs and could raise taxpayer expense or require agencies to reallocate funds or seek additional appropriations.
Operational agencies, payroll offices, and OPM will face a short-term administrative burden to update payroll and HR rules and to process back pay, risking implementation delays or errors.
A broad statutory definition of 'prescribed burn' could prompt disputes and appeals over which activities qualify for the differential, producing inconsistent application until regulations clarify scope.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Makes prescribed-burn suppression duties and smokejumper parachute jumps explicitly eligible for the federal hazard pay differential and requires OPM to issue implementing regulations within 90 days.
Official title: Amend section 5545 of title 5, United States Code, to provide hazard pay for carrying out prescribed burns, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 18, 2026 by Timothy Patrick Sheehy · Last progress June 18, 2026
Adds prescribed-burn suppression duties and smokejumper parachute jumps to the list of federal duties that qualify for the unusual physical hardship or hazard pay differential. Directs the Office of Personnel Management to issue regulations within 90 days and makes the pay differential effective for pay periods beginning after the regulations or 90 days after enactment, whichever is earlier. Also states a non-binding sense of Congress that prescribed fire control and smokejumper aerial work are hazardous and deserving of hazard pay. The change modifies pay treatment under 5 U.S.C. § 5545 to explicitly include prescribed burns and parachute jumps for smokejumper firefighters without broadly repealing existing hazard-pay determinations except as needed to apply the new rule.