7 U.S.C. § 7657 — Senior Scientific Research Service

(a) In general: This section creates the Senior Scientific Research Service ("the Service") within USDA. (b) Members: (1) Subject to the rules below, the Secretary appoints the Service's members. (2) To qualify, a person must have done outstanding agriculture or forestry research, earned a doctoral degree from an institution of higher education, and meet the Office of Personnel Management's qualification standards for a GS-15 level position. (3) No more than 100 people can serve as members at once. (4) Except as noted below, the Secretary may appoint and employ a member without following the usual competitive-service appointment rules, retention-preference rules, performance-appraisal and performance-action rules, classification and General Schedule pay rules, or adverse-action rules that normally apply under title 5. Even so, a member appointed this way keeps the same right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board and to file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel as someone in a regular GS-15 position. (c) Performance appraisal system: The Secretary must build a performance appraisal system for members that (1) systematically evaluates their work, and (2) encourages them to perform excellently. (d) Compensation: (1) Subject to the limits below, the Secretary sets each member's pay. (2) That pay can't be less than the minimum GS-15 rate, and can't be more than Executive Schedule Level I — unless the President approves a higher rate under section 5377(d)(2) of title 5. (e) Retirement contributions: (1) If a member used to work at a university right before joining the Service, and still has the right to keep contributing to that university's retirement system, the Secretary may — if the member asks — contribute up to 10 percent of the member's pay to that university system instead. (2) A member getting this university contribution does not, because of Service membership, get covered by or earn credit under the federal retirement systems in chapters 83 or 84 of title 5 — but their Service time still counts toward years of service for annual leave purposes under section 6303(a) of title 5. (f) Involuntary separation: (1) If a member is involuntarily separated from the Service without cause, the Secretary may appoint that person to a competitive civil service position at GS-15, as a career appointment. (2) But if that person wasn't already a career appointee in the civil service or Senior Executive Service right before joining the Service, this new appointment instead goes into the excepted civil service, and can last no more than 2 years.