EPA hits back against report on employees’ paid leave

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is defending itself against a watchdog report that said it paid numerous employees to be on administrative leave, some for more than a year.

Nanci Gelb, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator, said the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) blew the situation out of proportion and misled readers.

{mosads}The report had found that eight EPA employees were on paid administrative leave for more than four months, half for more than a year.

But in a response memo sent Tuesday, Gelb said only three EPA employees had more than a year of administrative leave during the four-year period studied. For two of them, the leave was not contiguous.

Furthermore, due to either leaving the agency or coming back to work, six of the eight employees were not on leave when OIG released its report, Gelb said.

“We believe the early warning report should have included this critical information,” Gelb wrote.

Under administrative leave, an employee’s supervisors allow him or her to collect a paycheck while neither working nor using vacation credit.

Gelb argued that the EPA’s problems are not bad compared with the rest of the federal government.

When the Government Accountability Office looked at 24 agencies, it found 252 employees who were on administrative leave for more than a year, and only two were from the EPA.

“GAO’s report did not characterize EPA’s use of administrative leave as excessive or unusual,” she said.