[Supplemental Payments to SES Rank Award Recipients]

A decision was requested as to whether Department of Energy Senior Executive Service members, who received two separate payments for their presidential rank awards for a fiscal year (FY), could retain the total amount of their award payments. The employees were issued initial checks for less than the amounts specified because those amounts, when combined with their respective base salaries, would have resulted in amounts in excess of the annual rate payable for their position levels at the end of the FY. Based on an increase in the executive pay ceiling, supplementary award payments were made at a later date. GAO found that, for presidential rank award recipients whose initial payments were reduced because of a pay ceiling, an agency is required to make supplemental payments so that the recipients receive the full amount of their entitlement, limited only by the new executive level pay ceiling. GAO found that, since the three recipients were officially paid their initial award payments on the date the checks were given to them, the supplemental award payments made to them later in the FY were proper.