Air Force clamps down on travel card defaults

Beginning Wednesday, the Air Force plans to crack the whip on employees who default on their government-issued credit card accounts by docking the salaries of account holders who are more than 120 days past due. According to an Air Force spokeswoman, this measure will help the service collect about $1.5 million in money owed by military and civilian personnel. The 1998 Travel and Transportation Reform Act ordered the General Services Administration to require federal employees to use government charge cards, instead of personal credit cards, for travel expenses. The law was supposed to allow agencies to take advantage of rebates offered by charge card companies, officials said at a recent House hearing. Ideally, the more the government uses travel charge cards, the more money agencies can earn back in rebates. In most cases, agencies reimburse employees for travel expenses and then the employees pay their bills. However, at the Defense Department, 40,000 workers have defaulted on more than $53 million in travel expenses, according to Clifford Skelton, an executive at Bank of America. Air Force personnel owe approximately $10 million of that debt. In May, Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) officials announced a plan to collaborate with Bank of America to remedy the situation. The new plan includes increased attention from agency management, deactivating infrequently used cards, docking salaries for accounts more than 120 days past due, establishing direct payment systems to the bank, reducing credit limits on individual cards and increasing late and returned check fees. At the Air Force, cardholders will get a warning when they are 90 days past due, and if the bill still remains unpaid at 120 days, up to 15 percent of available net income will be deducted by DFAS to pay the delinquent account. Though no service-wide plan is in place to discipline employees who allow their accounts to go unpaid, each commander has the decision on what additional discipline, if any, military members will receive. "For civilian employees, the debt is owed to a private company so there is no other discipline that can be taken," the spokeswoman said. "If a supervisor can prove without doubt that the card use was fraudulent, then a supervisor can take disciplinary action."