Sponsors (10)
The bill substantially raises and stabilizes pay and rest protections for federal wildland firefighters—boosting recruitment, retention, and safety—while increasing recurring federal personnel costs, imposing implementation complexity, and leaving some supplemental-pay and leave rules capped or administratively discretionary.
Federal wildland firefighters (USFS and DOI) receive sizeable base-pay increases (grade-specific boosts up to ~42%), raising take-home pay and improving recruitment and retention.
The higher special base rate is treated as basic pay for purposes like overtime, locality pay, and retirement calculations and is tied to future GS adjustments, helping firefighters' pay keep pace with general federal raises.
Deployment premium pay is extended to DOI and Forest Service employees — including prevailing-rate (wage-grade) staff — increasing pay during qualifying incidents and promoting pay parity across pay systems.
Higher permanent pay for wildland firefighters increases recurring federal personnel costs, which must be funded by taxpayers or reallocated from other agency programs, creating tradeoffs in federal budgets.
The deployment premium is treated as non-basic pay and excluded from some leave/overtime/retirement computations, reducing its long-term value for employees (less impact on pensions, lump-sum leave, overtime calculations).
Caps on supplemental pay (a $9,000 annual cap, GS-10 step cap for comparisons, and prevailing-rate increases capped at the Executive Schedule IV rate) limit compensation for higher-grade or senior staff and reduce full parity.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Introduced January 16, 2025 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress January 16, 2025
Creates permanent higher base pay, a new incident-response premium, and paid rest-and-recuperation (R&R) leave for wildland firefighters employed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. It sets grade-specific percentage increases to General Schedule base pay (and analogous increases for prevailing-rate firefighters), establishes a daily incident-response premium while deployed, and requires joint agency policies for paid R&R after deployments. Also limits the new premium (including a $9,000 annual cap and a pay-rate cap tied to GS-10 step 10), allows the Secretaries to administratively adjust the premium to align total compensation with prior-year levels (with required reporting), and permits a one-time transfer of up to $5 million in unobligated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funds to continue previously authorized temporary salary increases.