State Office News

         
The KASCOE officers, along with the officers of KACS, KASE and AFGE, participated in a joint meeting with Mr. Fuller, Jack Salava, Pam Davis, Arlyn Stiebe and Jim Parker at the State Office on 4/10/08. 

    After his welcome, Mr. Fuller covered current office structure in the state and the farm bill. 

    Jack discussed budget issues, temporaries and provided a listing of counties in the state in workload order.  Other items included:  no date set yet for the new Activity Reporting System to be put in place; there will be no permanent staff ceiling reductions in 2008 (current ceilings are CO-451 and GS-124); and potential retirements for DD's and CED's over the next five years are - 11 eligible now, 3 in one year, 5 in 2 years, 6 in 3 years and 2 in four years. 

    Pam is currently getting caught up on Length of Service Awards and has everything except the pins ready to send out to the DD's.  In the future, this will be done quarterly.  The OPF's have been scanned and the STO will receive the hard copies back in May.  They will verify everything has been scanned correctly and then ship them off to storage.  The EOPF's will be in place to be viewed in the near future.  There are 342 current CO employees that will be required to get background checks completed before fall in preparation for Link-Pass.  Information will be sent out to the COF's on this.  PII - there is currently no money budgeted for locked file cabinets and the STO is checking into  the purchase of shredders.  Awards - Pam explained the new award system as outlined in Notice PM-2631.  The award budget is now divided 25% for Superior Accomplishment Awards and 75% for Rating Based Awards.  Mr. Fuller is very disappointed that he will no longer be able to do the employee appreciation awards as he as done in the past. 

    Arlyn reported on the purposed changes in the farm bill as they related to farm loans. 

    Jim advised that 60 offices in the state will be receiving new faxes within the next 30 days and that the installation of the new computer equipment is almost completed.  The IT staff will have the capability in the near future to reset the e-auth passwords.