Legislation (HR-719) that has passed the House committee level to require TSA to review which of its investigators should be eligible for special law enforcement officer benefits likely would have little impact because the agency already is conducting such a review, according to a CBO analysis.
The bill focuses on TSA’s office of inspection, which conducts internal inspections, investigations and covert tests to assess the integrity of the agency’s activities and staff. Currently, roughly half of its employees are classified as criminal investigators and are eligible for additional compensation known as law enforcement availability pay and for enhanced retirement benefits.
CBO said that TSA “is already undertaking a strategic analysis of the agency’s workforce that, under current law, will serve as the basis for potential reclassifications” of employees in that office and that enacting the bill would not “significantly affect the timing or outcome of that process.”
The bill is a follow-up to an IG report that concluded that some of those employees who receive that pay, which is worth an additional 25 percent of salary, apparently do not meet the threshold of spending at least half of their time in actual investigative work.
