Federal employees approved for telework have been bilking the government by collecting D.C-area pay rates while actually living in much lower-cost regions.
Inspectors general for the Commerce Department and the Architect of the Capitol, a congressional office, found a significant percentage of their employees approved for telework were collecting salaries with locality pay rates higher than where they are now living.
Nearly one in four of the telework employees sampled in the audit of the Commerce Department were being overpaid, collecting as much as $10,000 in income they didn’t deserve.
The Architect of the Capitol, meanwhile, showed a stunning 68% overpayment rate for its telework employees.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, has been prodding agencies to do these reviews in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the growth of telework. She worries taxpayers are getting hit from both ends, with employees getting paid too much for too little remote work, even as the government still pays for the empty buildings where their offices used to be.
“Bureaucrats not showing up to work are being overpaid and avoiding accountability,” Ms. Ernst’s office said in releasing the Commerce Department audit.
She called it “taxpayer theft.”
The overpayments stem from the way federal pay works.
The federal government divides the country into nearly 60 regions. Salaries are adjusted based on where someone works.
An employee in Virginia Beach who is at GS-9, step one, on the federal pay scale made roughly $7,000 less than a similar employee in the D.C. area last year. A GS-13 step one employee made about $12,000 more by working in the D.C. area.
The audit looked at 25 remote workers and found 20 of them were listed with the wrong duty stations. Three were being underpaid but 17 were collecting too much, based on their actual work locations. They averaged nearly $6,000 in overpayments.
According to the audit of the Architect of the Capitol, legal and financial employees were most likely to be working remotely.
The inspector general said the agency bungled by not updating the employees’ duty stations in the records, even as they approved the telework agreements.
That seems to confirm Ms. Ernst’s worry that the push to grant employees work flexibility is being rushed, with taxpayers suffering the consequences.
The Commerce Department inspector general examined 31 telework employees for its case study. Seven were found to have been paid too much during the period under study.
Overpayments ranged from about $3,000 to one employee at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who collected more than $10,000 in erroneous pay.
Department officials said they were trying to claw back the money from most of the employees. But in one case the employee had left the department, and in another case, officials said they couldn’t pinpoint when the overpayments began nor who was responsible, so they are not trying to collect from that person.
Auditors also said the Commerce Department doesn’t know if telework employees are living up to the terms of their agreement that involve a certain number of days they’re still supposed to be in the office.
That, too, could result in someone being overpaid.
Commerce Deputy Assistant Secretary Jeremy Pelter admitted the bungles in a response to the inspector general and promised reforms such as prompting managers to update duty stations for remote workers.
But Mr. Pelter said he didn’t believe there was a widespread issue with telework employees not showing up on required days.
“The Department remains committed to strategically using workplace flexibilities, such as remote work and telework, to recruit and retain talent while ensuring employees receive the correct locality pay in accordance with applicable regulations and policy,” he wrote.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Architect of the Capitol for this story.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.