Office of the General Counsel

S003420
[xxx]

Dear [xxx]:

This is in response to your letter dated August 1, 1999, in which you reported that you had requested that your employing agency, the [agency], waive the recovery of 49 hours of annual leave that had been credited to your leave account as a result of timekeeping errors, and that the Customs Service had advised you to submit your waiver request to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

In fact, OPM has no authority to review your waiver request. As a result of legislative and executive action, the authority to waive leave now resides with the heads of agencies. See the General Accounting Office Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-316, 110 Stat. 3826, approved October 19, 1996, and the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) Determination Order dated December 17, 1996.

It is not entirely clear whether the letter dated July 19, 1999, that you received from the [agency's] Accounting Services Division, Payroll Group, constituted the [agency's] final decision concerning your waiver request. If this letter did not constitute a final agency decision, you will need to resubmit your waiver request to the appropriate office within the [agency].

It should be noted that when waiver decisions were the responsibility of the General Accounting Office, it was the position of the Comptroller General that the recovery of erroneously credited leave could only be waived where the necessary adjustment or offset to the employee's leave balance resulted in a negative leave balance. See Patricia A. Bolstad, B-216378, October 23, 1984 (copy enclosed).

Sincerely yours,

Murray M. Meeker
Senior Attorney

cc. [xxx]