Today, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-03) sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Director regarding oversight polices to ensure the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and the Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP) programs are conducted as Congress intended.

VERA-VSIP are tools at an agencies disposal for workforce restructuring. VERA enables agencies to provide voluntary early retirement to employees, and VSIP allows agencies to offer further incentive for early retirement in the form of lump-sum payouts. OPM is responsible for the approval of each proposed VERA-VSIP plan and the continued oversight of its implementation.

During a recent House Small Business Committee hearing which examined the Small Business Administration’s Office of Inspector General’s audit of the Fiscal Year 2014 VERA and VSIP program, Vice Chairman Luetkemeyer heard testimony stating OPM failed to conduct diligent oversight of the SBA’s VERA-VSIP program. OPM and SBA’s failure resulted in $2.1 million in wasteful spending with little significant agency restructuring to show for it.

As the letter states, “OPM’s oversight of SBA’s plan was so negligent that they failed to even confirm the accuracy of the information sent to them by SBA.” During the hearing, SBA Chief Operating Officer stated that with real due diligence, OPM should not have approved the plan that SBA presented, given that OPM “made their decision based off of false premises.”