On the Move

Almost 30,000 of your government peers receive help each year with job-related moving costs, at a cost of about $800 million.

But getting reimbursed for relocation expenses can be burdensome, paperwork-heavy and complex. For this reason, Congress began an experiment in 1998 to allow agencies to pay employees for moves in a simple prepaid lump sum. The experiment was set to expire this month, but a bill passed just before lawmakers left town for a pre-election recess extended the perk for at least four more years.

In a Senate report accompanying the bill (S. 2146) - which was introduced by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine; Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii -- lawmakers pointed to a test run by the Customs and Border Protection bureau.

"As the seriousness of international threats escalated after 9/11, the Office of Border Patrol within CBP identified a need to relocate hundreds of agents to critical U.S. border locations," the report said. "Border patrol agents volunteered to transfer to border locations deemed most vulnerable."

So CBP got permission from the General Services Administration, which runs the experiment, to start its own pilot program under the 1998 law. The lump-sum payments varied from $5,000 for a single, renting employee to $20,000 for an employee with a family and a home.

The payments actually reduced costs for CBP. From April 2004 through September 2005, the agency saved $23.7 million on 435 moves. Before this test case, CBP paid around $72,000 to move a Border Patrol agent. The 435 cases cost about $17,000 each.

The kinds of relocation expenses that are reimbursable when an employee is moving for a new government job include: transportation and per diem for en route travel to the new site, the transportation and temporary storage of belongings, costs associated with finding a home and temporary housing.

As always, there is no such thing as a free lunch. According to the Office of Personnel Management's fact sheet on relocation expenses, employees must agree to work for a certain amount of time in return for their relocation payment. They also have to establish residence in their new hometown.

And relocation expenses can't be paid to just anyone. Agencies can pay for the move only if the position would be hard to fill without the payment. Employees also have to move at least 50 miles to qualify -- the next suburb over doesn't count.

One interesting note about relocation expenses: Agencies can pay them to steal employees from other agencies, too, as long as it's a hard-to-fill post.