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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Inspector General
At a Glance
15-P-0170
June 19,2015
Why We Did This Review
On August 27, 2013, a member
of the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works
requested that the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), Office of
Inspector General (OIG),
initiate work in connection with
a fraud committed by John C.
Beale, a former Senior Policy
Advisor with the EPA's Office of
Air and Radiation. In particular,
the committee member asked
the OIG to determine EPA
policies and processes that
"facilitated" Beale's fraud. One
of the factors that facilitated
Beale's fraud was that the
agency overrode automated
controls used to cap pay at
statutory limits. As a result, we
initiated an audit of the EPA's
(including OIG's) controls over
statutory pay limits.
This report addresses the
following EPA goal or
cross-agency strategy:
• Embracing EPA as a high-
performing organization.
Send all inquiries to our public
affairs office at (202) 566-2391
or visit www.epa.gov/oiq.
The full report is at:
www.epa.aov/oia/reports/2015/
20150619-15-P-0170.pdf
Improvements Needed to Ensure EPA
Terminates Exceptions to Biweekly Pay Limits
at Completion of Emergency Response Work
What We Found
EPA made payments
totaling $4,141 to
employees in excess of
biweekly pay limits
because authorized
exceptions were not
terminated at the end of
emergency response work.
Annual basic and aggregate pay received by EPA
and OIG employees (including the Inspector
General) were within the applicable pay limits for
the periods sampled. However, we identified four
EPA employees who exceeded the biweekly pay
limit without proper authorization. The agency
authorized an exception to the biweekly pay limit
for emergency response work for each employee.
However, the EPA did not terminate the
authorizations at the end of the emergency response work, due to inadequate
controls. This caused the employees to periodically receive unauthorized pay in
excess of their biweekly pay limits. As a result, the EPA paid the employees
$4,141 for overtime and unused compensatory time in excess of their biweekly
pay limits.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the Deputy Administrator establish internal controls to
ensure exceptions to the biweekly pay limits will be automatically terminated
once the emergency response work has ended; recover the $4,141 paid to EPA
employees in excess of the biweekly pay limit; and identify and recover any
additional funds paid to employees in excess of the biweekly limit as a result of
the recent establishment of end dates for all open emergency response work.
The agency concurred with our recommendations and provided corrective
actions with milestone dates.
Noteworthy Achievements
The agency identified corrective measures taken and planned regarding statutory
pay. These corrective measures included generating and reviewing reports
detailing gross pay and total pay to ensure compliance with statutory pay limits,
and removing the critical designation for all 22 positions designated as such in
the EPA payroll system.

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