The EPA agreed with a recommendation to annually verify whether employees are working in locations in accordance with their assigned locality pay. Image: Tada Images/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffAn audit has found incorrect rates of locality pay for a some offsite-working EPA employees, the latest in a series of reports making such findings that however involved only a small number of employees.
“The EPA cannot ensure that employees are paid the correct locality pay because it does not have comprehensive or reliable data to verify employees’ worksite locations . . . While locality pay is determined by the location from which employees regularly work, the EPA has not implemented an effective control mechanism to periodically verify that an employee’s work location is consistent with his or her assigned locality pay,” said the report.
Based on its own review of some 16,300 employees, the IG found indications of overpayments to four, totaling some $3,600; it said agency systems did not allow for determining whether any employees had been underpaid.
The EPA agreed with a recommendation to annually verify whether employees are working in locations in accordance with their assigned locality pay.
Prior reports from the IGs of a half-dozen other agencies similarly found incorrect locality pay—in some cases, underpayments—but for only small numbers of employees, and similarly blamed shortcomings in agency records systems rather than misconduct by employees.
The reports have come in response to requests from Capitol Hill Republicans who asserted that overpayments were widespread—an assertion that the Trump administration in turn cited in its directive earlier this year generally cancelling offsite working arrangements.
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