Free Republic

The government is taking action to curb the long-maligned practice of putting federal employees on paid leave for months — and even years — while they wait to be punished for misbehavior or cleared and allowed to return to the office. In a memo last week, Office of Personnel Management director Katherine Archuleta told agency heads that the extensive use of administrative leave throughout government should be just the opposite: a “temporary solution,” only for problem employees who pose a danger to themselves or their colleagues. In other words, if someone poses a threat to his own safety or the...

EXCLUSIVE: Eight Environmental Protection Agency employees who racked up a total of more than ten years’ worth of paid “administrative leave” between 2011 and 2014 -- valued at more than $1,096,000 -- apparently did so because they were involved in “cases of alleged serious misconduct,” Fox News has learned. In a memorandum sent from EPA’s acting assistant administrator, Nanci E. Gelb, to EPA’s inspector general, Arthur Elkins -- a draft also was given to Fox News -- the agency has revealed that at least three of the affected employees have now left EPA. All of the eight “were or are...

Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of Exempt Organizations currently on paid leave, has not had any of her computer access restricted since she abdicated her responsibilities, according to an IRS source with knowledge of the situation. Lerner was placed on administrative leave on May 21 after refusing to tender her resignation, and logged into the IRS’s computer system using her agency computer as recently as June 4, the source tells me. She has the ability to access the same information that was available to her before she was placed on leave. The sources tells National Review Online: [Lerner]...

David Foley, deputy commissioner of the GSA's Public Buildings Service, has returned to the agency after being placed on administrative leave. Officials made no public announcement about his return. He was placed on leave in April, the same month he apologized to Congress for remarks he made in a video where he joked about the GSA's lavish spending. Foley was one of the speakers at the taxpayer-funded GSA $823,000 conference in Las Vegas that came under sharp congressional scrutiny. An audit uncovered wasteful spending on a talent show, open bar, red carpet party, and lavish gifts. GSA personnel spent wasted...