Political Quotes

“this amendment I am offering, on behalf of myself and Senator Chafee, deals with a problem that is particular to Rhode Island. The problem involves what is known as locality pay. That is the differential pay that Federal employees are given because of higher costs in the area in which they live and work. Essentially it is a comparison between the labor cost in the private sector and the Federal sector. If there are higher private labor costs, there is a differential added to the paycheck of the Federal employee in the particular area. The problem with Rhode Island is, because of the complicated rules of allocation, my entire State is excluded from locality pay. So Federal workers who work in Rhode Island do not receive locality pay, even though their fellow workers, in some cases just a few miles away, in Massachusetts or Connecticut, receive this differential locality pay. Now, the reason the rules disadvantage Rhode Island is, essentially, to qualify for locality pay, you have to have at least 2,000 workers in a county and that county has to be contiguous to another locality area.”