WASHINGTON — Not everybody might be Marco Rubio.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is rolling out a brand new invoice to crack down on authorities staff who’re working multiple civil service job concurrently, until they’ve permission to take action.
While current regulation prohibits full-time authorities staff from acquiring multiple federal place concurrently with out permission, the Hawkeye State Republican is hoping to tighten these guidelines through the Dismantling Double Dippers Act, which might require annual audits of payroll data.
In tandem with the brand new invoice, Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus, urged the Office of Personnel Management to check the extent to which authorities staff are double-dipping.
“The public, who’s paying the salaries of federal staff and contractors, deserves entry to this info and the federal authorities,” she wrote in a letter to OPM Director Scott Kupor obtained by The Post.
“Because OPM oversees insurance policies associated to hiring and managing the federal workforce, your company is finest located to supply the management vital to extend transparency and cease the timecard fraud by double-billing bureaucrats.”
Despite the current guidelines in opposition to civil servants having multiple authorities job, there have been a number of identified situations of staff managing to carry a number of federal positions on the identical time.
For occasion, between 2021 and 2024, a Department of Housing and Urban Development employee had a number of full-time contractor gigs with the federal authorities and, at instances, even billed Uncle Sam for greater than 24 hours of labor in a day.
That employee, Crissy Monique Baker, pleaded responsible in July to creating fraudulent claims concerning the work hours she put in, costing taxpayers an estimated $225,866 in losses.
She labored at HUD, AmeriCorps, and the National Institutes of Health, and at one level claimed to have accomplished 26 hours’ value of labor on 13 days in a single month.
Another case cited by Ernst entailed an NSA contractor who had filed one other Department of War contract on the identical time and pled responsible in 2014, bilked taxpayers $65,265, and submitted 79 fraudulent timesheets.
The GOP senator additionally pointed to a case that didn’t contain precise double-dipping however is thematically related. It concerned a prime coverage adviser on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who claimed to have been moonlighting in one other position on the CIA.
John Beale, who was sentenced to 32 months in jail again in 2014, managed to maintain the scheme going for 13 years and ripped off taxpayers to the tune of $900,000, based on prosecutors.
While claiming to be finishing up vital missions for the CIA, he would truly go on jaunts abroad or chill out at his trip house in Massachusetts.
“This wasn’t a case of moonlighting per se, however the EPA ought to have identified such an association was unlawful and higher monitored the whereabouts and productiveness of one in every of its senior workers members,” the senator argued.
To higher implement the prevailing regulation, the Dismantling Double Dippers Act would require OPM’s official watchdog to conduct an annual audit cross-checking authorities payrolls.
The senator additionally requested OPM to make details about authorities job titles and descriptions accessible to the general public.
