Claim for Reimbursement of Actual Subsistence Expense

An employee of the Department of Justice requested reconsideration of a GAO decision which denied her claim for reimbursement of lodging costs consisting of apartment rental, telephone, utility, and maid service charges incident to her temporary duty assignment. In that decision, GAO held that the expenses could not be reimbursed because the address of the apartment for which the expenses were claimed was the permanent address of the employee's husband whose official duty station was there. Reimbursement of expenses for noncommercial lodgings provided by friends or relatives is limited to the additional costs actually incurred by the host providing the lodgings. The employee's expenses were the entire expenses incurred rather than additional costs. Accordingly, they were not reimbursable. The employee provided new evidence purporting to show that her husband's permanent residence and duty station were elsewhere and had been erroneously changed immediately prior to the period of the claim. She stated that she was living in the apartment on temporary duty before her husband joined her and contended that her prior occupancy made her the host and her husband the visitor in this case. GAO found that the employee's new evidence failed to establish that: (1) her husband's official duty station was erroneously changed to her temporary duty station, (2) her husband did not have a residence and permanent address in the city of her temporary duty station, and (3) it was inappropriate to consider her husband as a host providing noncommercial lodgings to a friend or relative. The previous GAO decision denying the expense claim was affirmed.