Monday federal headlines – January 4, 2016

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive.

• The federal transit benefit for public transportation will nearly double in 2016 to $255 a month in compared to $130 per month where it previously was. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority says the increase will raise the pre-tax and tax-free commuter benefit making it more affordable to use public transportation. More than half of Metro’s weekday riders use the transit benefit. (WMATA)

• The Department of Veterans Affairs said it will pay $88.1 million in annual dividends to about 430,000 veterans in 2016. All the vets served befor 1956 and hold qualifying life insurance policies. The dividends come from the earnings of trust funds that Veterans have paid insurance premiums into over the years, and are linked to returns on investments in U.S. government securities. (Veterans Affairs)

• 2015 was another record-setting year for the Federal Register. The government’s journal reached 81,611 pages in 2015, up from nearly 78,000 the previous year. Included in that is 3,378 final rules and regulations with more than 2,000 proposed rules,  the Competitive Enterprise Institute says. (CEI)

• Lockheed Martin has a new multiyear contract from the Department of Defense to deliver 78 C-130J Super Hercules aircraft. The order is worth over $1 billion initially and $5.3 billion overall. The contract will be coordinated with the government’s Better Buying Power initiative, to achieve savings through through multiyear procurement rather than annual buys. The contractor will start delivering aircraft this year and continue through 2020. (Lockheed Martin)

• Armed militia members continue to occupy a national wildlife refuge building to protest the arrest of an eastern Oregon ranching family facing jail time for arson on federal lands. The group’s leader Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a standoff with the government over grazing rights in 2014. In a video posted on Facebook, Ammon says the group is prepared to stay there as long as it takes. (Associated Press)

• A new Defense Department Inspector General’s report found the department has no way of determining if it is actually saving money by migrating to the cloud. The report also found that DoD may not be able to effectively identify cloud computing security risks. The problems stem from DoD’s failure to establish an integrated repository of detailed information used to identify cloud computing service contracts. DoD also did not create a standard definition as to what cloud computing actually entails. (Federal News Radio)

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