A House-passed bill creating a new form of unpaid disciplinary leave for senior executives would affect few employees and would have little budgetary impact, a CBO cost estimate has said.
The language would allow agencies to place SESers on unpaid leave for up to 180 days if they are being investigated for misappropriation of funds, misconduct, neglect of duty, or malfeasance; serious violations would lead to immediate termination. Currently, investigations of such offenses generally require agencies to initially place employees on paid leave, but later those employees may be suspended indefinitely without pay or terminated, CBO said.
It said that the number of such suspensions is unknown because agencies do not track administrative leave for misconduct separately, but that "such situations are very uncommon." There would be some reduction in outlays for salaries of suspended employees and because they would not be making retirement contributions there would be some reduction of money coming into the retirement fund, CBO said, but it said that neither would be significant in terms of the budget.
The language, part of a larger bill (HR-2879) of responses to the IRS and GSA scandals, now moves to the Senate; a similar House-passed measure died there last year.