Officials explain compensatory time off for travel

Officials from the Office of Personnel Management wanted to stay on message as much as possible Thursday while presenting details of new interim regulations that allow federal employees to earn compensatory time off for work travel outside of normal business hours.

The new regulations, they said, are designed to grant compensatory time off only if travel time is not compensable in any other way. "This is the default provision; first you try to apply all other rules," said an OPM official who spoke to an audience of several hundred personnel officials from a range of federal agencies.

"You must be getting tired of hearing this," the official said after repeating the same message at least 10 additional times through the course of the meeting. OPM asked that none of the officials involved in the forum be identified.

The interim regulations went into effect Jan. 28, and immediately sparked questions from across the federal government. The comment period will close on March 27. After that, OPM personnel will review the comments and issue the final set of regulations.

OPM officials acknowledged that there will be difficulties in interpreting the new rules. For instance, it is up to agency leaders to decide what counts as "usual waiting time" during travel that would be eligible for compensation. According to OPM, the definition of waiting time is at the "sole and exclusive" discretion of the agency head--that decision is not negotiable with federal workers' unions.

The OPM official said agencies should not credit employees with compensatory travel time if they are able to use their waiting time for their own benefit or entertainment. Officials also said that employees should not be credited with compensatory time off for time spent eating "bona fide" meals during waiting periods.

"If an employee decides while waiting at the airport that he really wants to visit one of those restaurants … that would not be creditable," the OPM official said.

Several federal personnel officials commented later that that such policies merely encourage government workers to lie about how they spend their travel time.

A State Department official noted that federal officials who travel internationally on a regular basis will rapidly accrue compensatory time off.

"We will never see them," the State Department official said. That official asked OPM to explore ways to limit the regulations to domestic travel. OPM staff noted that any such change would have to be made in Congress.

Several other points made at the forum:

• The compensatory time off regulations apply only to workers who are defined as employees under Title 5 regulations. This excludes Senior Executive Service personnel, Foreign Service Officers, among others.
• Compensatory time off for travel does not apply to travel to permanent change-of-duty stations.
• If an employee is normally eligible to receive compensation for travel time--but that compensation has hit a cap--any additional travel time is not covered by the interim regulations.
• Items that have been left to agency discretion under the regulations--other than the definition of usual waiting time--can be negotiated by union officials.
• There is no hard cap on how much compensatory time off eligible employees can earn.

Comments on the interim regulations can be submitted by e-mail to pay-performance-policy@opm.gov or by fax at 202-606-0824.