Washington – It’s a perk of federal employment: a free monthly subsidy that pays for commutes on public transportation. But scores of workers have been taking the government for a ride, selling their benefits on the Internet and pocketing millions in cash each year.
The program, which covers 300,000 federal employees nationwide, has been abused by workers across a variety of agencies, the Government Accountability Office will report to Congress today.
$17 million a year lost
Workers in the Washington region have defrauded the government of at least $17 million a year, with the actual figure probably several million dollars higher, according to the GAO.
Employees have taken the benefit vouchers, known locally as Metrocheks, and turned them into a kind of black-market currency, selling them – often at a discount off the face value – to buyers who can use them to ride Metro, regional buses or commuter railroads.
Workers have been accepting the transit subsidies but driving to work, or claiming a subsidy far greater than their commuting costs and selling the excess, GAO investigators found.
For example, one employee at the Department of Transportation claimed the maximum benefit of $105 per month, but his commute cost $54.
Meanwhile, agencies have been handing out transit subsidies to employees who also receive free parking spaces, to employees who no longer work for the government and, in some cases, to people who apparently were never employed by the agencies.
Monitoring sales on eBay over three days last August, GAO investigators found 58 people selling Metrochek cards and investigated 20, all of whom were federal employees. Among them:
A Virginia man who works for the Transportation Department who sold his unused Metrocheks, worth $1,080, on eBay. He told investigators he did not know it was illegal, despite a warning on the cards.
A married couple working at the Defense Department each received transit subsidies but drove to work together. The husband told investigators that he sold 61 lots of Metrocheks, worth $6,000, on eBay.
A worker at the Internal Revenue Service received monthly transit subsidies since 2004 and at the same time had a free parking space at his office. He told investigators that he sold Metrocheks valued at $930 on eBay.
Lack of oversight
The GAO testimony, scheduled today before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, describes a program that costs taxpayers $250 million annually but has virtually no oversight.
“The internal controls on this particular program are grossly inadequate, and no one agency is responsible for overseeing or managing the program – that is a recipe for disaster,” said Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the panel’s ranking Republican, who initiated the investigation. “It’s not a case of someone being asleep at the switch; it’s a case of no one being at the switch at all.”
Coleman said the idea behind the program – to reduce traffic congestion and pollution by getting federal workers to use public transportation – remains worthwhile.
