[Request for Reconsideration]

GAO was asked to reconsider a decision which determined that officers serving as Assistant Judge Advocates General of the Navy had no continuing right to the basic pay for their assigned ranks after the date on which the authorizing regulation was repealed by the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act. In its prior decision, GAO held that no specific savings provision was included to prevent the pay reductions that might result from the repeal of the regulation for the officers in question. It was suggested that one of the officers acquired an enforceable statutory entitlement to the basic pay of his assigned rank when he served as Assistant Judge Advocate General of the Navy and that his right to the basic pay matured at that time and could therefore qualify as a right preserved by the general savings provision of the act. It was also suggested that this interpretation was consistent with the intent of Congress. GAO did not agree with this reasoning. Congress may prospectively reduce the pay of members of the uniformed services, even if that reduction deprives members of benefits they had expected to earn. The act reduced or eliminated many such inchoate rights or expectations relative to future pay benefits. GAO has held that those benefits were preserved only to the extent expressly enumerated under the terms of the savings clauses contained in the legislation. GAO found that the officer in question had a matured right to the basic pay of the rank he held while acting as Assistant Judge Advocate General of the Navy. However, he did not have a matured right to that basic pay for any future period. Therefore, his entitlement to such pay terminated on the date of repeal. Accordingly, the prior decision was affirmed.