Effect of Trump’s job freeze in Hampton Roads is uncertain

Jan. 28--President Donald Trump's federal hiring freeze, and his related statement calling health care and pension costs for civilian employees "unsustainable," are of high interest in Hampton Roads, where more than 35,000 people hold federal jobs and veterans are given preferential treatment for new openings.

"Nobody is setting their hair on fire," but information is scarce, said Craig Quigley, head of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance. His organization, funded by local cities and counties, is a watchdog for the region's defense-dependent economy.

Trump last week ordered that no new civilian employees can be hired as of Jan. 22. He also wants the administration's top budget and personnel managers to develop a long-range plan within 90 days to use attrition to shrink the 2.1 million-strong civilian work force.

The Navy, Marine Corps and other military branches can continue to sign up service members. The freeze at the moment applies to all other openings, including civilian defense workers and Veterans Affairs employees.

Trump's memorandum stated that department heads can fill some open positions that are "necessary to meet national security or public safety responsibilities." The administration's Office of Personnel Management also has some leeway in hiring.

But few details have emerged.

When asked how the actions might affect Hampton Roads, White House spokesman Michael Short said, "Stay tuned."

The Defense Department is "carefully weighing its options," according to a Pentagon statement on the freeze, but new Secretary of Defense James Mattis has not made a public decision about civilian jobs.

Quigley said it's difficult to speculate where a hiring freeze might be felt. He noted, for example, that Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, which employs skilled technical workers, is always hiring as employees retire or leave for other jobs.

"You've got to figure that, for the most part, the federal agencies in Hampton Roads are staffed today at about where they should be," Quigley said. "So it's all about: 'How long does this go on?'... If you keep this in place for a very long time -- years, let's say -- the effect then would build over time."

The region's federal workforce has grown substantially in recent years. In 2015, more than 56,500 civilian jobs were in the region -- about 10,000 more than 2005, according to the most recent U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. Hampton Roads' federal jobs account for 29 percent of all such employment in Virginia.

Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Virginia Democrats, joined 51 other members of Congress last week in urging the Trump Administration to exempt the entire VA from the hiring freeze.

The legislators noted the department has more than 45,000 job openings as of late 2016 that need to be filled to deal with the VA's backlog of 450,000 veterans awaiting decisions on benefit claims.

The senators cited a statement from Dr. David Shulkin, a senior VA official and Trump's nominee to lead the department: "I need to fill every one of those openings in order to make sure we're doing the very best for our veterans."

Sheila Fair Bailey, spokeswoman for the Hampton VA Medical Center, said in an email that the agency is continuing to recruit to fill jobs but "will not be making any tentative or firm job offers until we receive final guidance" on the hiring freeze. Bailey did not respond to an inquiry about the number of openings at the center.

Jonathan Livingston, spokesman for The Military Officers Association of America, said Trump's order "has too much ambiguity" for the veterans lobbying group to pass judgment, but it is concerned a freeze might affect the VA's services.

The officers' group also is worried it could hurt new veterans or spouses of active-duty service members who qualify for preferential consideration for some federal jobs.

Along with the hiring freeze order, Trump also hinted changes may come in federal employee health care and pension benefits.

Those benefits "continue to be based on antiquated assumptions and require a level of generosity long since abandoned by most of the private sector," according to a White House statement. "Those costs are unsustainable for the federal government, just as they are proving unsustainable for state and local governments with similar health and retirement packages."

Short, the White House spokesman, said the benefits would likely be part of the requested long-term plan for cutting the federal workforce.

Kaine said in a statement Friday that Trump's actions show disrespect to loyal employees. He noted that House Republican legislators recently agreed to revive the obscure Holman Rule that would permit lawmakers to single out and cut the pay of any federal worker to as little as one dollar.

"There is clearly a trend in the Trump Administration and among some Republican members of Congress of demonizing and demoralizing the federal workforce," Kaine said in a email.

"When President Trump institutes an across-the-board federal worker hiring freeze and House Republicans support actions that inject politics into federal agencies' decision-making and allow federal workers' salaries to be cut to a dollar, we are unable to recruit or retain a high-performance federal workforce."

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