WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine are celebrating the culmination of their successful efforts to get federal employees in Virginia Beach and Norfolk a much-deserved pay raise, as the President signed an executive order that designates a locality pay adjustment for Hampton Roads. This adjustment will increase salaries for approximately 30,400 Virginians in Virginia Beach and Norfolk in order to better reflect the rising costs of living in the area. Warner and Kaine have pushed OPM to take the necessary steps to implement a pay raise for Hampton Roads federal employees. While federal employees in the region could have been receiving higher pay last year, OPM’s delay in implementing the pay scale adjustment exacerbated the situation for Virginia families who had been long-expecting a raise. 

“There is no doubt that hardworking federal employees deserve this long-overdue pay raise,” the Senators said. “As the cost of living has increased in Hampton Roads, we have long fought to provide federal workers in the area a needed boost. We’re hopeful that the new pay rates will offer peace of mind to those who work hard to serve our country.”

In 2017, Kaine and Warner wrote to the Acting Director of OPM to express concern that federal employees in the Hampton Roads region were led to believe they would see a pay raise for calendar year 2017 and asked that the agency take quick action to implement the pay scale adjustment. Senators Warner and Kaine have also cosponsored legislation to provide all federal workers a pay raise of 3.6 percent, an increase from FY19’s 1.9 percent average.