Every Saturday night, loyal listeners of National Public Radio tune in to humorist Garrison Keillor’s popular show, A Prairie Home Companion. The broadcasts come from the pretend town of Lake Wobegon, which Keillor claims as his birthplace. The town’s name, he says tongue-in-cheek, is from an old Native American phrase that translates as “the place where we waited all day in the rain for you.” Keillor also closes his big monologue “newscast” by saying it’s coming from Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Does that sound like your federal office or agency?

In fact, if you are a current, former or retired fed, Lake Wobegon could be your hometown too. It sounds like the statistical place description of the federal government workforce where, according to the Government Accountability Office, just about everybody is faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings, and more powerful than a locomotive. If you doubt it, look at their award-winning performance.

A GAO study of Uncle Sam’s 2013 performance awards shows that 99 percent of all employees were good, as in really, really good. And that two-thirds were even better, getting the equivalent of B+ or A on their report cards. While that level is possible, many people — including some long-time feds — think something else is going on. The Washington Post headline on a story about the GAO report said “In federal workforce ranks, nearly all receive rave performance reviews.” It makes the government seem like the federal version of “Hamilton,” the Broadway play that won a near-record 11 Tony Awards. Others explain the high-performance-on-paper of the federal establishment as a long-running series of hidden pay raises.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve heard from dozens of federal workers at the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Agriculture Department and other agencies. Most of them said the bonus program in their part of their agency is either a joke, based on the old boy (or old girl) network of playing favorites, or a way to give about-to-retire high-ranking workers the equivalent of a goodbye gold watch. Paid for by the taxpayers.

Several managers suggested the pay raise drought over the past few years has prompted some bosses to give subordinates bonuses to make up for the three-years without pay raises, or the relatively small 1-plus percent increases the last couple of years.

A study by the Federal Times showed that even during the three-year no-pay-raise period, hundreds of thousands of workers got 3 percent adjustments by qualifying for within-grade (time in grade) raises, based on satisfactory service. People become eligible for a WIG every one, two or three years depending on which of the grade’s 10 steps they are in. While many feds resent it when people say the WIGS are “automatic” the GAO reports show that only about 1 percent of all employees are denied them qualifying them at least for semi-automatic status.

“We can’t or couldn’t give our people a pay raise because there was none,” said a former OPM supervisor said. Who said he had no problem with the high number of highly rated employees. “By the time they’ve passed the probation period most workers are in fact satisfactory if not better. The more experience they get …. with some exceptions … the better they get …. so I’m not surprised that everybody or almost everybody is rated satisfactory or better. It’s because they are. That simple.”

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

If you were an audience member on the Oprah Winfrey show on Sept. 13, 2004, you can count yourself lucky. On that day, Winfrey gave each member of the audience a new Pontiac G-6 sedan worth $28,500. Pontiac donated the cars out of its advertising budget in order promote the new G-6 car line.

Source: History.com

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