Four Environmental Protection Agency employees have been on paid administrative leave for more than a year.
One employee has been suspended with pay since January 2010 and has collected $300,671 from taxpayers without working a single day since that time.
Another has been suspended since May 2010 and paid $351,300, according to a new special audit by EPA’s inspector general.
The EPA paid $18 million in salaries for employees to not work between 2011 and 2013, according to GAO figures.
But those numbers understate the true amounts paid to problem employees to stay home from work.
The EPA was also invoking “official time,” a much-maligned policy where federal workers are paid by taxpayers to work on union business, to cause employees facing discipline to draw pay while missing work.
The payroll code was used for extended absences immediately predating some already lengthy absences recorded as administrative leave.
It’s not the intended purpose of official time, and caused tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to employees facing discipline without the numbers showing up in administrative leave figures.
The EPA ran the numbers because recent studies have shown that, not only is it exceedingly difficult to fire a federal employee, but the employee often can also stay home from work while still collecting full pay and benefits as lengthy firing procedures are underway.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., noted that “nearly 60,000 federal employees received paid leave for an entire month or more over a two-year period,” including some being investigated for wrongdoing such as “criminally negligent homicide, and sexual abuse.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has said he will hold hearings on the issue.
First-line managers can approve “the various types of leave,” the IG report said, suggesting that administrative leave is granted freely with no need to escalate it internally.
EPA’s manual says administrative leave can be used “when an employee’s removal or indefinite suspension is proposed, and the employee’s continued presence at the work site during the notice period would constitute a threat to public property or the health and safety of coworkers or the public.”
Members of Congress have noted that either the federal government is filled with such exceedingly violent figures, or — more likely — managers freely place employees on paid leave for long periods of time simply to get them out of their way while minor performance or disciplinary issues are dealt with, despite the loss to taxpayers.
The Washington Post described one federal employee’s life as “one long vacation” as he collected a $185,000 salary while rusty bureaucratic wheels turned on a long, slow process investigating a complaint against him by one of his subordinates.
