Government Gone Wild – EPA Gave $481,819 in Unauthorized Bonuses
Government abuse of taxpayers continues.
On the heels of the IRS giving millions of dollars in bonuses to bureaucrats that didn’t deserve them, now we find out the EPA handed out almost $500,000 in unauthorized retention bonuses.
The Washington Free Beacon wrote a story about a recent report by the EPA Inspector General.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paid out nearly $500,000 in unauthorized bonuses, according to a report released by the EPA Inspector General Friday.
An Inspector General (IG) investigation found that 11 EPA employees received $481,819 in unauthorized retention bonuses between 2006 and 2013. The bonuses are meant to incentivize employees who receive other job offers.
The bonuses are supposed to be reauthorized annually, but for 10 of those EPA officials, the IG could find no evidence that their bonuses were reviewed, as required by federal regulations and EPA policies.
The IRS bonus scandal is even more outrageous.
From USA Today:
The Internal Revenue Service handed out $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with disciplinary issues — including more than $1 million to employees who didn’t pay their federal taxes, a watchdog report says.
The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said 1,146 IRS employees received bonuses within a year of substantiated federal tax compliance problems.
The bonuses weren’t just monetary. Employees with tax problems received a total of 10,582 hours of paid time off — valued at about $250,000 — and 69 received permanent raises through a step increase, the report said. The report looked at bonuses in 2011 and 2012.
Employees’ tax problems included “willful understatement of tax liabilities over multiple tax years, late payment of tax liabilities, and underreporting of income,” the report said.
These examples show the compensation program in the federal bureaucracy is out of control. In the private sector bonuses are given to reward employees for superior performance but as the EPA and IRS examples show, there are serious issues with the federal bonus program.
It’s shocking that taxpayer money is being randomly given to bureaucrats without any control
This is another reason why Congress must cut the size and scope of government.
