Colleen Kelley, the National Treasury Employees Union’s president for 16 years, hasn’t gotten too attached to life in Washington, D.C. And she hopes the next NTEU president doesn’t get too used to it, either.

The four-term president told Francis Rose on In Depth she never considered herself a Beltway insider after living in the DC area for more than 28 years. Actually, she’s looking forward to moving back to her native Pittsburgh after her retirement next week, on Aug. 13.

Kelley said she spent about half her time as NTEU president on the road, listening to federal employees voice their concerns. She said that’s the best advice she can offer her successor once NTEU casts its votes next Tuesday.

“I would strongly suggest that they do travel, and that they’re meeting with our members, and with our local chapters and leaders. Because I think anybody who works in DC, and who stays in DC, and makes decisions in DC, about places outside of DC, I think that’s very, very dangerous,” Kelley said.

Four candidates are running for the position, including NTEU vice president Tony Reardon, who has earned Kelley’s endorsement.

“I have worked with him for 25 years, and he has worked for federal employees for 25 years. But the delegates will decide on Tuesday,” she said.

The federal workforce has changed significantly in nearly two decades. Kelley said she’s seen more women work in government. She’s also seen the shift from blue-collar jobs to white-collar, IT-focused professions.

“The last 16 years have been very exciting ones and very challenging ones, I’m sure all federal employees would agree,” she said.

However, she’s also seen a retirement bubble grow, and no young feds looking to fill the ranks.

“In most agencies, because they have been so challenged for funding, in the last few years in particular, we see large gaps in the  workforce. There are many agencies now identifying the fact that they do not have a lot of employees that are under the age of 30, and that’s not a good thing,” Kelley said.

Memorable successes throughout the years include a fight in 2003 to defend collective bargaining for employees entering the fledgling Department of Homeland Security.

“When they stood up that department, there was an effort to rewrite their entire personnel system that would have stripped them of their collective bargaining rights. NTEU filed a lawsuit against that system, and we won, and that has made a huge difference to those employees,” Kelley said.

She also worked with President George W. Bush’s administration and the Office of Personnel Management to set up flexible spending accounts.

“That’s something today that most federal employees take for granted — that they can pre-tax their health insurance premiums and their out-of-pocket medical expenses just like every other taxpayer in the country can,” Kelley said. “They really are things today that unfortunately are taken for granted, because many just don’t remember when it was different. But I remember.”

Despite her long tenure as president, Kelley leaves behind a long list of actions that NTEU has yet to see resolved.

“A lot of the negotiations that we’ve started, the grievances that we’ve started, the lawsuits that we’ve filed, the legislation that we’ve tried to stop on Capitol Hill and the legislation that we’ve tried to push on Capitol Hill — those are all things that I won’t get to see through to fruition, because so many things just take a long time,” Kelley said.

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