This bill, called Tim's Act, would change pay, leave, health, and retirement rules for Federal wildland firefighters and related support personnel. It creates a new "special base rate" pay schedule that replaces the standard General Schedule base rate for wildland firefighters with higher percentage increases by grade. It creates an "incident response premium pay" paid daily during qualifying wildfire responses, with limits and an annual $9,000 cap for each employee and rules for agency review. The bill adds limits so total pay from certain premiums cannot exceed the level II Executive Schedule, while allowing agency waivers. It adds paid rest and recuperation leave after qualifying incidents, requires a public database to track cancer and cardiovascular disease for wildland firefighters, and requires a mental health program and 7 consecutive days of mental health leave per year. The bill changes retirement and workers' compensation rules: it allows certain past service to be credited for retirement, counts overtime as basic pay for retirement calculations for wildland firefighters, creates disability rules tied to environmental exposures, and adjusts retirement cost calculations. It also requires parity reviews for structural firefighters, annual CPI-based pay adjustments for the new pay scale, hazard duty pay in some situations, recruitment and retention bonuses, housing allowances for deployments over 50 miles, tuition assistance payments, a casualty assistance program, and several reporting and recordkeeping requirements. Many provisions include specified effective dates or deadlines for agency actions.
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Proponents (the bill sponsors and supporters) frame the bill as reforming and enhancing pay and benefits for Federal wildland firefighters. The bill text directs higher base pay, incident premiums, leave, health programs, retirement credit, and recruitment and retention tools. Supporters would point to the bill's measures for mental health services, a disease tracking database, casualty assistance, and pay parity with other firefighting roles as measures to improve firefighter safety, compensation, recruitment, and retention.
No publicly available information.