Don't Let This Happen to You

ilthy hotels. Muggings. Canceled flights. Travel orders that are just plain wrong. If you travel for the government, all this and more can happen to you. And if it does happen, you may end up battling your agency over the cost.

If you have a dispute over travel expenses, you first must have the agency or department look at your claim. If you're still not happy with the result, you can ask the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals to review it. Seventy-three determined souls did that last year. Here are some of their stories.

Paved With Good Intentions

The most common reason claims end up with the board is that a government worker was told one thing, spent money based on that information and then was told something else. Consider the following cases:

n In 1995, Defense Department civilian Mark Chapman traveled from California to Patuxent River, Md., for business and was told he could stay overnight in Washington on his way to and from Patuxent. His agency later denied his reimbursement request for the D.C. per diem and gave him only the lower Patuxent rate.

n The Veterans Affairs Department sent six employees from Maryland, California, Nevada and Texas to Alabama in July 1996. Their supervisors issued travel orders authorizing up to $66 a night for lodging. Each employee spent $64.80 a night, but a VA auditor allowed only $53 a night.

n Colin Brown flew from Alaska to Florida for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995. His travel authorization allowed $57 a day for lodging and $26 a day for meals and incidental expenses (M&IE). His agency later reduced the per diem allowance to $45.65.

n Utah resident James Claxton and 10 other Air Force civilians spent 75 days in Germany in 1995 for their jobs. The travel orders allowed $8 a day for lodging and $49 for M&IE, $10 of which was for incidental expenses.
Upon Claxton's return, the travel office said his incidental expense amount should have been $3.50 a day, and the Air Force wanted Claxton to return the difference.

n Lorrie Wood of Colorado, another Air Force civilian, was sent to Ohio for two separate weeks in 1994. Instead of flying home for the week in between, she took leave and went to San Antonio. The travel office staff told her she would be reimbursed for the amount she would have spent had she flown home for that week. When she returned home, the Air Force refused to pay any part of the Ohio-San Antonio round trip.

n Air Force civilian Thomas Gozzo was stationed in Italy in 1995 when he learned that his mother was ill. He made immediate plans for his family to fly to the United States to see her. His commander said he would issue emergency travel orders so that Gozzo's travel expenses would be reimbursed.
Upon the family's return, the commander told Gozzo he would not be reimbursed.

In all these cases, bad information is to blame. "Sometimes [officials] have the best intentions when answering a question, but they don't have the whole picture," says one Defense Finance and Accounting Service travel official in Denver who asked not to be identified. He also blames downsizing, saying that those authorizing travel and answering questions are now more likely to be inexperienced.

"Unfortunately," he says, "we can't override a regulation, even when bad information was given out."

Pound Foolish

Sometimes a traveler tries to be frugal and is stymied. Take Derinda Rhodes, who traveled from her home in Alabama to San Diego to work on VA database consolidation in the summer of 1996. Work demands meant that she had to reschedule her trip home three times on her final day in San Diego. She eventually got home by booking two flights, one of which had only one seat left-in first class. For that seat she paid $43 more than the coach fare. Her alternative would have been spending another night in one of the cities along her route (which had per diem rates of $87 to $157). The VA auditor denied reimbursement of the $43, and, saying there was no regulation to back it up, the board also refused her claim.

In the Line of Duty

Don't think you're covered 24 hours a day just because you're on business travel, cautions Jan Miller of the Agency for International Development's general counsel office. When traveling, it's just like being at home, he says: "We go out to lunch, we're not covered." Consider what happened to William O'Callaghan, who traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, for the agency. Because checks and credit cards are not widely accepted, he carried $3,000 in cash. He was told that it was not safe to leave cash in his hotel room or in the hotel safe. Kiev AID staff told him that violent crime was rare but that pickpockets were common. So O'Callaghan kept his cash on him and hid most of it in his socks and other places not vulnerable to pickpockets.

One night, after attending a going-away party for a colleague, he left on foot for his hotel. (The hotel was close by, and taxis were hard to come by. Colleagues advised O'Callaghan about the safest route.) He was mugged and left unconscious. His homeowners' insurance reimbursed him $1,000, and seeking to recover the rest, O'Callaghan filed a claim under the Military and Civilian Employees' Claims Act. The agency denied his claim because they said his loss didn't occur while he was executing official duties. The board dismissed his claim, saying it had no authority to review claims under the law.

Don't try the "but for" (but for government travel I wouldn't have been doing this) argument, says Miller. "No ifs, ands, or buts. That's a loser right away. Make your claim and argue that you're on agency business."

Home Away From Home

Nightmares happen on domestic soil, too. Benny Mitchell and Ronald Pitts traveled from Alabama to Texas for a meeting at Corpus Christi Army Depot. They stayed in the bachelor officer quarters there at first. Because the quarters were substandard (they had, among other things, no locks on the doors, showers in which the water would suddenly get scalding hot, no mattress pads, torn sheets, roaches, peeling paint and cracks in the windows), Mitchell and Pitts moved to a hotel for eight nights of their stay. They submitted claims for the lodging costs, which the Army rejected, citing regulations that say Defense civilians will not be reimbursed for lodging when government quarters are available. They appealed to the board, which approved their request.

An Ounce of Prevention

So how can you avoid such tear-your-hair-out situations? Use common sense, says GSA public affairs liaison Bill Bearden. "The people who travel for the government should know the government regs. You have to take some responsibility as an employee."

Experts agree: Education is the answer. Whether you're a traveler or an authorizing official, the best way to prevent problems, says DFAS financial systems specialist Chuck Hurst of the Columbus, Ohio, center, is to "talk to your policy people when issuing orders to make sure they are correct, even if it seems elementary." Double-check the entitlements, because despite good intentions, authorizing officials may not always know the law.

Once a mistake has been made, even if agency officials think, "'This guy got screwed-I'd like to fix it,' they don't have the authority," says Hurst. "Some things are just morally not right, but we [can't] go outside the law."

In reality, these problems are rare, points out Stephen M. Daniels, chairman of the GSA contract appeals board. "When you think about how many times federal employees travel, there are next to no appeals filed," he says.

"Obviously, it's a good idea if the employee and authorities have a good understanding of what the rules are," Daniels says. "People do have a good knowledge of what the rules are, and the rules are actually quite clear, and that's why there are so few of these cases."