Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowances-Miscellaneous Expenses Allowance

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION <CFR>41 CFR Part 302-16</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FTR Case 2022-04 Docket No. GSA-FTR-2023-0017, Sequence No. 2]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3090-AK65</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowances—Miscellaneous Expenses Allowance</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP), General Services Administration (GSA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States General Services Administration (GSA) is proposing to amend the FTR by removing the relocation miscellaneous expenses allowance (MEA) lump sum amounts from the FTR. These lump sum amounts will be published in FTR Bulletins on an intermittent basis, much like what is done for per diem and mileage rates. The relocation MEA actual (as opposed to lump sum) amounts are unchanged and will remain in the FTR. The proposed rule would also update the types of expenses that may or may not be reimbursed by relocation MEA when employees itemize under actual expense. The proposed rule would also update and clarify other relocation MEA regulatory sections and rearrange them into a more sequential order. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Interested parties should submit written comments to the Regulatory Secretariat Division at the address shown below on or before March 25, 2024 to be considered in the formation of the final rule. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit comments in response to FTR Case 2022-04 to: <E T="03">Regulations.gov: http://www.regulations.gov.</E> Submit comments via the Federal eRulemaking portal by searching for “FTR Case 2022-04”. Select the link “Comment Now” that corresponds with “FTR Case 2022-04.” Follow the instructions provided on the screen. Please include your name, company name (if any), and “FTR Case 2022-04” on your attached document. If your comment cannot be submitted using <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> call or email the points of contact in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document for alternate instructions. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Please submit comments only and cite FTR Case 2022-04, in all correspondence related to this case. Comments received generally will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal and/or business confidential information provided. To confirm receipt of your comment(s), please check <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> approximately two to three days after submission to verify posting. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For clarification of content, contact Mr. Rodney (Rick) Miller, Program Analyst, Office of Government-wide Policy, at 202-501-3822 or <E T="03">travelpolicy@gsa.gov.</E> For information pertaining to status or publication schedules, contact the Regulatory Secretariat Division at 202-501-4755 or <E T="03">GSARegSec@gsa.gov.</E> Please cite FTR Case 2022-04. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of Significant Changes</HD> GSA is proposing to amend the FTR by removing the relocation MEA lump sum amounts, providing that lump sum amounts will be published in FTR Bulletins on an intermittent basis, rearranging the relocation MEA sections into a more sequential order, clarifying and modifying relocation MEA sections by updating employee eligibility for relocation MEA, and updating examples of expenses for which relocation MEA may be authorized or not. Pursuant to 5 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5738, the Administrator of General Services is authorized to prescribe regulations necessary to implement laws regarding Federal employees when assigned a temporary change of station (TCS) or when otherwise transferred in the interest of the Government. The overall implementing authority is the FTR, codified in title 41 of the Code of Federal Regulations, chapters 300 through 304. GSA's OGP continually reviews and adjusts policies and regulations under its purview to address Government relocation needs and to incorporate best practices, where appropriate, as a part of its ongoing mission to provide policies for travel by Federal civilian employees and others authorized to travel at Government expense. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 5724a(f) and 5737(a)(6), an employee transferred in the interest of the Government from one official station to another, assigned to a TCS location, or who has completed a TCS assignment and returned to their previous official station is authorized a relocation MEA. The purpose of the relocation MEA is to defray some of the costs incurred due to relocating. The allowance is related to expenses that are common to living quarters, such as fees for disconnecting and connecting appliances; cutting and fitting rugs, draperies, and curtains moved from one residence to another; utility fees or deposits that are not offset by eventual refunds; forfeiture of medical, dental, and other non-transferrable contracts; and the cost of changing automobile registration(s) and driver's licenses. The FTR provides that a relocation MEA may be paid using one of two methods: lump sum or actual expense. Under the lump sum method, the agency pays a lump sum amount without requiring employee documentation of expenses. Under the current regulatory language, the lump sum amounts are “either $650 or the equivalent of one week's basic gross pay, whichever is the lesser amount” for an employee without immediate family members relocating with them, and “$1300 or the equivalent of two weeks' basic gross pay, whichever is the lesser amount” for an employee with immediate family members relocating with them. Under the actual expense method, the agency may authorize the employee to claim actual costs depending on the type of expenses incurred, in an amount in excess of the prescribed lump sum amount. The employee justifies any actual expenses by itemizing with supporting documentation. Reimbursement is limited to one or two weeks' basic gross pay depending on whether or not the employee has an immediate family relocating with them, not to exceed the maximum rate payable for a position at GS-13, Step 10, of the General Schedule (base) (see 5 U.S.C. 5332). The proposed rule would amend the FTR by removing the relocation MEA lump sum amounts from the FTR and directing readers to an FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amounts. GSA would publish the initial FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amounts prior to the final rule effective date. Agencies are advised that the relocation MEA lump sum amounts are expected to increase since they were last updated in 2011. Moving forward, GSA will publish FTR bulletins to update the relocation MEA lump sum amounts, as needed, based on changes to the Consumer Price Index. The proposed rule would also clarify in the regulatory text that “basic gross pay”, as referenced in FTR part 302-16, does not include “locality pay.” See 5 U.S.C. 5302 and 5304. This proposed rule would also update and clarify the relocation MEA sections in the FTR and rearrange them into a more sequential order, to include replacing the table at FTR 302-16.2 with an updated list of examples for which the relocation MEA may be authorized, and updating the list of examples for which the relocation MEA may not be authorized. It would also remove the relocation MEA employee eligibility table at FTR 302-16.3 and reformat it as an employee eligibility listing. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Regulatory Impact Analysis</HD> The following section is a list of activities related to the regulatory compliance that GSA anticipates will occur during the first and subsequent years after publication of the final rule. GSA estimates this cost by multiplying the time required to conduct these activities (publication of a proposed rule, final rule, FTR bulletin, and increase in the relocation MEA lump sum amounts) by the estimated (rounded) compensation. GSA calculates the estimated hourly compensation using the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's 2023 General Schedule (GS) Rest of United States Locality Pay Table, the full fringe benefit cost factor of 36.25 percent, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and a 12 percent  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> overhead factor to arrive at an overall adjustment factor of 52.6 percent. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">General Schedule (opm.gov), OMB Memo M-08-13, dated March 11, 2008,</E> and <E T="03">Computing Hourly Rates of Pay Using the 2,087-Hour Divisor (opm.gov).</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  See Attachment C of OMB Circular A-76 Revised, dated May 29, 2003. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Government Costs</HD> GSA estimated the total cost each year to issue a FTR bulletin with the new relocation MEA lump sum amount, based on the number of GSA full-time employees (FTEs), the average hourly rate for each grade level, and the number of hours to draft the FTR bulletin by program managers, hours to review by General Counsel, and hours to review and approve by senior management. GSA estimates it will take 8 GSA employees on average, with a GS-14 step 5 with an average hourly rate of $96.45/hour, 1 hour each in year 1 to draft the initial FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amount. Therefore, GSA estimates the total estimated cost for this part of the rule to be $772 (= 8 × $96.45 GS-14 step 5 rate × 1 hour). GSA estimates it will take 1 GSA employee on average, with a GS-15 step 5 with an average hourly rate of $113.46/hour, 1 hour in year 1 to review the initial FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amount. Therefore, GSA estimates the total estimated cost for this part of the rule to be $113 (= 1 × $113.46 GS-15 step 5 rate × 1 hour). GSA estimates it will take 1 GSA General Counsel staff on avera ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━