Errant federal employees may be a little more likely to get fired now that House lawmakers have agreed to strip agencies of their authority to put “bad apples” on indefinite administrative leave.
Adminstrative leave policies frustrated conservatives nationally after former IRS official Lois Lerner was granted four months of leave after apologizing for the innappropriate scrutiny of Tea Party groups that sought tax-exempt status.
But she was far from alone in receiving such extensive paid leave, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz noted while touting his Administrative Leave Reform Act. A government audit of 24 agencies found that between 2011 and 2013, 263 federal employees facing misconduct allegations were left on administrative leave for more than a year, at a cost of $31 million.
“One reason administrative leave has become such a problem is because agencies simply find it easier to keep them on administrative leave. It is the path of least resistance,” Chaffetz said. “This means that some individuals face little to no penalty for significant misconduct and are all too often permitted to remain on administrative leave until they are able to retire.”
If the Chaffetz bill passes into law, federal employees could be restricted to as little as 14 days of paid leave per year before agencies have to make a final decision about their misconduct allegations.
When Chaffetz introduced the legislation in January, Democratic colleagues on the oversight panel balked, due to concerns that the bill would abrogate the due process rights of federal employees. But the final version of the bill proved uncontroversial, in part because it allows for the administrative leave to be extended for 30 days at a time.
If agencies want to extend someone’s administrative leave a second time, however, they must explain to Congress why the employee needs to be kept on paid leave for 45 days or more.
“The bill, however would not punish employees by stripping them of pay before allegations are properly adjudicated, preserving the principle that one is innocent until proven guilty,” Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate to Congress from the Virgin Islands, said Tuesday evening. “The bill before us strikes the appropriate balance, we believe, between the need for stricter oversight of agency use of administrative leave and the due process rights of federal employees.”
