OMB Moves to Curb Resale of Federal Transit Benefits
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
A federal agency is issuing new guidelines today to tighten loopholes that have allowed federal workers to pocket tens of millions of dollars by illegally selling their transit benefits on the Internet.
The Office of Management and Budget is requiring federal agencies and departments to enact by June 30 basic standards aimed at eliminating fraud and abuse of the transit-benefit program.
"You'll never completely eliminate it, but by implementing these controls you can virtually eliminate it," said Robert Shea, OMB associate director for management.
Last month, the Government Accountability Office told Congress that it investigated the transit-benefit program and found abuses by workers in several agencies. The program, which covers 300,000 federal employees nationwide, provides up to $110 a month to workers to pay the cost of commuting on public transportation.
Workers in the Washington region alone have defrauded the government of at least $17 million a year, with the actual figure probably several million dollars higher, according to the GAO.
Employees who drive to work have accepted the subsidies or have claimed subsidies far greater than their commuting costs and then sold the excess on the Internet, GAO investigators found.
Meanwhile, agencies have been handing out transit subsidies to employees who receive free parking spaces, to people who no longer work for the government and, in some cases, to people the agencies apparently never employed.
One worker at the Commerce Department, for example, left her job in 2001 but received benefits until 2006, when she changed addresses and the agency caught the mistake. By that time she had sold the benefits, in the form of paper Metrochek fare cards, worth $4,000, the GAO said.
To combat the problem, the OMB is directing agencies to verify the eligibility of employees and the cost of their commutes, and to make sure employees are not receiving free parking if they are getting transit benefits.
In addition, the OMB is requiring agencies to adjust benefits when an employee is on leave or moves, and to eliminate them once a worker leaves the job. The agencies are also directed to require employees to sign a certification stating that they understand that selling or giving transit benefits to anyone else is illegal.
