Your tax dollars...down the drain: Increasing use of 'official time' at federal agencies

(From the office of
Sen. Rob Portman)

U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has released the latest example in a monthly series highlighting Washington’s wasteful spending during a time of record debt:

In a recently released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) re-affirmed that a substantial and increasing amount of taxpayer dollars are paying the salaries and costs of federal employees working on certain union activities such as collective bargaining and filing grievances, rather than on normal job duties.

Based off a 1978 statute of Congress that “reflects a congressional finding that unions are in the public interest,” the federal government’s term for federal employees being paid for union representational activities is ironically called “official time.” While on official time, federal employees continue to be paid as if they are on duty status working during their regularly scheduled times.

The report’s findings are sobering. In the ten agencies sampled by GAO, official time hours increased from 2.0 to 2.5 million between 2006 and 2013, with the biggest increases in the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Transportation. Total federally-paid official time hours exceeded 3.4 million in 2012 (the latest year data are available), costing taxpayers over $156 million.

In the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) alone, approximately 265,000 voluntarily-registered bargaining unit employees were spread across roughly 18 unions and 200 facilities in 2013, and total hours used for official time exceeded one million.

When asked to evaluate the scale and nature of the official time, VA management responded that “having on-site union representation helps lessen and resolve disputes more quickly,” and is thus more effective carrying out its mission.

“Federal agencies like the VA need to make sure that they have all hands on deck to fulfill their missions,” said Portman.

“Unfortunately, however, many agencies allow their taxpayer-funded employees to focus their time and energy on full-time political, union activities that don’t have anything to do with the official task at hand.

"At a place like the VA, taxpayer dollars should be funding employees to tackle the challenges of the claims backlog and providing necessary medical care to our veterans.”

While most agencies do not distinguish between payroll and non-payroll costs, the Social Security Administration reported that out of $14.6 million in union representational activity costs, $700,000 was allocated for travel and per diem costs.

It is important to note that these Office of Personnel Management (OPM) figures are based off rough estimates which GAO found “lack assurance of accuracy and also lack adequate documentation.” Therefore, the taxpayer tab may be even greater.

After concluding that “the scope and level of official time use reinforces the need for oversight and accountability,” GAO recommended that OPM add different cost estimate approaches, work with agencies to increase efficiency through their database, and consider sharing information on the monitoring of official time between agencies.

Last year, Portman introduced the Federal Employee Accountability Act (S. 1312) along with U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R- Oklahoma), which would limit the use of official time. The bill would repeal the provisions that entitle federal employees to official time while providing an exception for circumstances where both unions and agencies agree the use of official time is “reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.”