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Washington, D.C.—The head of the union representing tens of thousands of frontline homeland security employees today called on Congress to find $20 million to fully fund Customs and Border Protection (CBP) overtime in fiscal year 2012.
“Overtime is essential when staffing levels are low to ensure that inspectional duties can be fulfilled and officers have sufficient back-up,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). CBP is understaffed at ports of entry by hundreds, if not thousands, of officers, according to independent studies.
“Inspectional overtime at ports of entry is funded by a variety of user fees,” said the NTEU leader. “User fees are designated by statute to pay for services provided to the user, such as overtime for passenger and commercial vehicle inspection during overtime shift hours.”
CBP collects the user fees to recover certain costs incurred in processing air and sea passengers and various private and commercial land, sea, air and rail carriers and shipments. The funds go into a separate user fee account. The user fee accounts have been down due to the recession.
The NTEU leader made her comments as the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security was conducting a hearing on the proposed fiscal 2012 budget for CBP. The proposed overtime funding cutback would reduce significantly the availability of overtime pay for CBP Officers and Agriculture Specialists.
Instead, President Kelley recommends that the subcommittee look at increasing user fees and consider using $640 million of collected, but unused, Customs user fees “to ensure that CBP inspectional overtime is fully funded in fiscal 2012.” A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showed that CBP has a $639.4 million unobligated balance in the user fee account. These balances have remained in the user fund account for more than 10 years, GAO said.
NTEU is the nation’s largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including the entire 26,000-employee CBP workforce.