This bill increases pay for federal wildland firefighters employed by the Forest Service and Department of the Interior for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The bill provides a special pay rate that increases base salaries by amounts ranging from 42 percent for the lowest grade positions down to 1.5 percent for the highest grade positions, and similarly increases wages for prevailing rate employees. Additionally, the bill establishes a new incident response premium pay program that provides covered wildland firefighters deployed to respond to qualifying wildfire incidents, prescribed fire incidents, or severity incidents with daily premium pay at 450 percent of their hourly rate, capped at $9,000 per calendar year unless national wildfire preparedness levels reach critical thresholds. The bill also requires the Forest Service to use streamlined environmental review authorities for forest management activities in high-risk wildfire areas and funds these provisions by rescinding unobligated balances from the Inflation Reduction Act. The changes take effect in the first pay period on or after October 1, 2023.
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