Bonus Holiday for DC Feds

Senior Correspondent Mike Causey is using his use-or-lose leave. While he’s gone, FederalNewsRadio presents the Six Most Popular Federal Reports of the Year, as determined by the number of web hits. Think of it as the Six Days of Causey. We begin today with the sixth most popular which originally appeared on December first. sk

According to civil service rules all federal workers are created, or at least are supposed to be treated, equal. Or equally. Whatever!

Except…

Every four years it pays to work Inside The Beltway.

Here’s the deal:

Several hundred thousand feds who work in and around D.C. are going to get two holidays next month. That will make for a 4-day weekend for many folks at the Pentagon, National Institutes of Health, Weather Service, Commerce, Justice, the FTC, OPM, Interior and dozens of other operations inside the capital beltway.

If you work in Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia , Des Moines or even the far suburbs of DC you can stop reading now, unless you just like to suffer!

For most inside-the-beltway feds the extra long four day weekend will be time off. With pay and no charge to annual leave.

Here’s the deal:

Monday January 19th is a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. It happens every year.

Tuesday, January 20th, is Inauguration Day. It doesn’t happen every year. But this is the time and Washington, D.C., is the place to be. And if you work for the federal government in certain parts of the metro area, you will get the day off on January 20th.

For pay purposes, the metro Washington area covers a lot of ground. It takes in many counties in Maryland and Virginia, and a couple in West Virginia too. And the city of Baltimore. That is the Washington-Baltimore locality pay area. But…

On Inauguration Day, the metro area shrinks. A lot. At least the part of it where people, who work inside that zone, can be given the day off.

The idea is not to give them a holiday, officials say every four years, but rather to clear the streets in and around D.C. of people and cars. So that people who don’t live and work here can come and crowd the streets and, if they feel really lucky, can look for a parking space.

So who are the lucky feds who get Inauguration Day off in addition to the MLK Jr. holiday?

Non-emergency feds who are employed in the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince Georges counties in Maryland, Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia and feds who work in the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, Va. That’s it. If you work in Baltimore as a fed, Tuesday is a workday. If you work in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., or Frederick, Md., it is just another work day.

Special non-holiday holidays, like Inauguration Day, come with a set of complex rules and instructions. And they raise a lot of questions. For the rules of the day, click here: Washington, DC, Area Special Pay and Leave Procedures for Holidays on January 19 and 20, 2009

Nearly Useless Factoid

Like elephants? Since winter is here, stock up on Murphy’s Oil. According to AmusingFacts, “Murphy’s Oil has been used on elephants in the winter to clean them.”

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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