Payment of Per Diem During Long-Term Training Assignment

GAO was asked to decide whether the Army may implement a Grievance Examiner's findings and recommendations. The findings and recommendations called for the retroactive modification of travel orders for four of nine employees to permit payment of per diem during a long-term training assignment instead of shipment of household goods and transportation of dependents to the training location. The record indicated that prior to the beginning of the training, the Army decided that the employees would only be authorized the transportation of their household goods and families, not the per diem they were expecting. Submission of the matter to GAO raised the question of whether orders authorizing movement of an employee's family and household goods to a training location may be amended even after transportation to the training site has begun, on the basis that cost comparisons justifying such transportation in lieu of paying per diem as required by law and regulation were not made. Legislation provides that agency heads have the discretionary authority to pay or reimburse employees less than the full cost of training, but payment for the transportation of an employee's family and household goods may be made only if the estimated cost of that transportation is less than the aggregate cost of per diem for the period of training. The estimated costs must be based on cost comparisons performed on individual case by case bases. Before the decision to pay for only transportation expenses was made, the army performed cost comparisons on the basis of average costs not specifically related to each individual case. The general rule that travel orders may not be retroactively modified to either increase or decrease the rights and/or benefits due employees applies only to competent orders. Where orders are clearly in conflict with a law or regulation, they may be modified to make them consistent with the applicable law or regulation. In this case, it was demonstrated that the authorization of transportation was not properly included in certain travel orders. In these circumstances, the orders were invalid to the extent that they restricted the employee concerned to reimbursement of transportation costs instead of the per diem which would otherwise have been paid. GAO did not object to payment on a per diem basis to those employees whom the Grievance Examiner found were entitled to per diem instead of transportation costs.