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Washington, D.C: -- The National Treasury Employees,Union (NTEU) today rejected as far too costly, unnecessary and inappropriate the possibility of rotating up to 20 percent of Customs Service Inspectors to new posts of duty every year in the "mistaken belief' that it would enhance integrity in the nation's principal border?control agency.

NTEU President Robert M. Tobias told a House Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that the Treasury Department itself has said "there are no validated studies that establish a correlation between personnel rotation and the level of integrity" in Customs.

NTEU counts more than 12,000 Customs employees, including Inspectors, among the 155,000 federal employees it represents in 21 agencies and departments. Customs is an agency of the Treasury Department.

Tobias cited a report by Treasury's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR)??prepared for the Subcommittee??that rotating between five and 20 percent of Inspectors annually would cost as much as $93 million. "No one is more offended by or adamantly committed to ferreting out and disciplining" anyone who compromises Customs' mission or integrity "than the members of NTEU who work for Customs," the union president said.

To embark on a program of annual rotation for such a large number of employees "when no empirical proof of its effectiveness exists seems capricious at best and cruel at worst," Tobias said.

He added that it would make it increasingly difficult for Customs to attract and retain the skilled, talented people it needs to protect America's border, since Inspectors in many parts of the country already can earn equal or better compensation from state or local police forces. Making them uproot their families periodically would drive them into civilian law enforcement work, he said.

On another aspect of the problem, Tobias took issue with suggestions that rotation improves integrity by preventing law enforcement officers from developing personal relationships with those they regulate. "That flies in the face of the concept of `community policing,"' he said, "which comes down squarely in favor of experience and familiarity versus any real or perceived increase in vulnerability to corruption."

And he expressed "grave concern" over the views of some in Customs management that locally?hired and employed Inspectors, particularly along the Southwest border, are at greater risk for corruption because of friendships or family ties. He said "NTEU totally rejects the underlying implication" in that view that those with relatives and friends across the southern border are somehow more prone to participate in corruption than those with relatives and friends across the northern border.