The EPA needs to assure that positions that become vacant due to buyouts and early retirement offers are eliminated as intended, an IG report has said.
It said that 479 employees voluntarily left in 2014, with the EPA paying $11.9 million in incentives. One condition of the authority granted EPA is that vacated positions cannot be filled using the same or substantially similar position descriptions used for the employees who left.
It said that two of the four EPA organizations reviewed correctly used the authority by either abolishing the positions or by substituting one with a different position description as part of a reorganization. However, one office filled seven vacated positions with the same descriptions of the positions that had been vacated, and another office did so with one.
EPA paid a total of $200,000 in buyouts to create those vacancies, it added.
Senior managers “were aware they should not hire employees under position descriptions of separated employees” but gave varying reasons for not following that policy, including time constraints, concern about loss of continuity and the belief that the policy does not apply to all positions.
