The House has joined the Senate in passing HR-719, a reaction to IG findings about potential misuse of “law enforcement availability pay” at TSA.
The bill would direct the parent department DHS to review the standards used to classify TSA office of inspection employees as criminal investigators and thus eligible for that special pay, worth 25 percent of salary.
It would bar TSA from hiring any new employee into the office of inspection until the IG is satisfied that employees designated as criminal investigators meet the minimum legal requirements for that designation, in particular that they spend an average of at least half their time performing criminal investigative duties.
Currently, roughly half of the employees in that office, which conducts internal inspections, investigations and covert tests to assess the integrity of the agency’s activities and staff, are classified as criminal investigators and thus receive that special pay.
So-called LEAP pay takes the place in that occupation of “administratively uncontrollable overtime” that goes to many frontline law enforcement officers—a form of extra pay that itself has been controversial. A law passed last year restricting it in the agency making the most use of “AUO” pay, Customs and Border Protection, takes effect in January.
