Federal Insider: Three years is too long for administrative leave

It’s cases such as these that have spiked interest in fixing administrative leave. During the 2011-to-2013 period, DHS alone accounted for more than a quarter of the federal employees on leave for a year or more. The 263 total employees on leave during that time had salaries of more than $31 million. Seventy-one of them were from DHS, “more employees than any other department,” GAO said.

Justin Greenberg, a DHS spokesman, said the department “had already begun implementing strict limitations on the use of administrative leave,” before the latest GAO report. “DHS agrees with the GAO’s recommendation that we evaluate the results of our administrative leave policy, and we will continue to do so on an ongoing basis to identify successful practices, address potential inefficiencies, make appropriate adjustments, and share results across the Department.”

Meanwhile, the Obama administration and Congress are trying to rein in administrative leave. The Office of Personnel Management told agencies in May that administrative leave should be “as brief as possible under the circumstances.”

The House is considering legislation that would prohibit placing federal employees on administrative leave “for more than 14 total days for reasons relating to misconduct or performance.”

A Senate bill says “agency use of administrative leave . . . has exceeded reasonable amounts.” It would limit the leave to five consecutive days but would allow for investigative leave, without loss of pay, if the employees posed a threat.

While attention often falls to the employees on leave, it is management that needs to explain any abuse of the process.

“Putting an employee on administrative leave during a disciplinary process is a management decision, so the notion that the leave could be abused by the employee is misguided,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “One thing we do not support is to provide incentives to management to drag out an investigation or limit due-process procedures by arbitrarily cutting off the time an employee can be on administrative leave. The burden to act more quickly must be on those who have control over the process, not on the employee who has no control.”

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