Employee relocation costs estimated at more than $4 billion-Defense Dept

[The Straight Story]

Employee relocation costs estimated at more than $4 billion

By Daniel Pulliam
[e-mail]

A draft of an Office of Management and Budget report reveals that the Defense Department's four service branches spent about $3.4 billion in fiscal 2003 relocating 706,000 workers. The rest of the government spent about $655 million on 22,000 relocations.

OMB produced the report after requesting data from agencies on how much they spend on employee relocation. OMB Senior Program Examiner Jack Kelly spoke about the figures Wednesday during a meeting of the Governmentwide Relocation Advisory Board.

OMB asked for budget data for fiscal 2003 through 2006 and the number of relocations authorized and completed, among other things. Responding to the request were 160 government entities, including each Cabinet department, their major subsidiaries and independent agencies such as the General Services Administration and NASA.

At the urging of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, OMB and GSA have been trying to get agencies to track their relocation expenditures, but that has been difficult.


http://www.govexec.com/daileyfed/0105/012705p1.htm

[Spinzonner]

1. Well, as long as we're not wasting the money

on paying for meals for injured soldiers.