The graduate faculty in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs has written a letter to the FOPWG suggesting an alternative plan based on marginal income. One idea motivating this plan is that employees with higher income would see a bigger reduction in pay, but their reduced salaries would maintain their current ranking. Such a plan has the desirable outcome that employees just over the boundary into a higher salary tier do not end up taking a pay cut that reduces their take home pay below that of someone at the top of the salary tier below. If there are constraints that demand pay reductions (in %) be equivalent to furlough days (in whole-day increments), then this model may need some modifications. But it appears to have a lot going for it.

This plan proposed by the Humphrey School has a lot of desirable features! It maintains a minimum salary cutoff ($40,000). The sizes of pay reductions (in %) are smaller (for the lowest salary tiers, much smaller) than those in the FOPWG proposed model, up to about $85,000. And across the salary range of $100,000 to $300,000, the curve relating % pay reduction to salary is less "flat" than that proposed by the FOPWG. I like it.