In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner wrote on Thursday that whistleblowers within the Department of Homeland Security had alerted her to what she called a "profound and entrenched" habit of abusing an overtime program, adding that the misuse of it in six DHS offices cost taxpayers some $8.7 million per year. According to the Washington Post, whistleblowers say that the practice of dipping into the "candy bowl" can sometimes add up to 25 percent to employees' paychecks and has reached such a degree that managers often hold it out as an incentive in the recruiting of new employees.
Lerner wrote in the letter that in one Washington, D.C. office of Customs and Border Protection, employees who claimed overtime "frequently watch sports and entertainment channels" or spent the two additional hours for which they could collect "at their duty station relaxing, joking, surfing the internet, and taking care of personal matters". She went on, "This case is not an isolated occurrence. Rather, it is part of a persistent pattern" which whistleblowers, some of whom were also authorized to receive overtime, were disclosing "against their own financial self-interest due to concerns about the ethics of the practice and the resulting impact on the federal budget". The letter also suggested that DHS officials had taken "insufficient steps to correct the problem" when confronted with allegations, pointing to a 2008 promise to implement an agency-wide policy directive to "bring conformity to policies and practices" after a whistleblower at a Border Patrol office in Lynden, Washington reported routine abuse of the overtime system there.
Lerner, whose Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency designed to protect employees and ensure against "prohibited personnel practices", told the Post in an interview that many DHS employees have come to consider the overtime pay in question their due. "These are not border patrol guys chasing bad guys who can't stop what they are doing and fill out paperwork for overtime. We are not questioning that," Lerner said. "These are employees sitting at their desks, collecting overtime because it's become a culturally acceptable practice."
Peter Boogaard, a DHS spokesman, told the Post that acting DHS Secretary Rand Beers had ordered a department-wide review of overtime practices in response to Lerner's letter. "DHS takes seriously its responsibility to ensure proper use of taxpayer funds," Boogaard said. "While many frontline officers and agents across the department require work hour flexibility, often through the use of Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUO), misuse of these funds is not tolerated."
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