BNUMBER:  B-270446
DATE:  February 11, 1997
TITLE:  Customs Service

**********************************************************************

Matter of:Customs Service

File:     B-270446

Date:February 11, 1997   
                                                                                                              
DIGEST

The Customs Service may use its operating appropriation to cover the 
cost of extending its psychological assessment and referral services 
to its employees' family members adversely affected by work-related 
incidents arising from law enforcement activities or traumatic 
incidents involving death or serious injury to its employees in the 
line of duty.
                                                                                                                 
DECISION

BACKGROUND

The United States Customs Service (Customs Service) asks whether it 
may use its operating appropriation to pay for psychological 
assessment and referral services for family members of its employees 
under certain circumstances.  For the reasons explained below, we 
conclude that it may.

The Customs Service Employee Assistance Program provides psychological 
assessment, short-term counseling and referral services to its 
employees for work-related or personal problems affecting employees' 
work performance and morale.[1] The Customs Service proposes to extend 
assessment and referral services, but not counselling, to family 
members of employees who are adversely affected by work-related 
incidents associated with their law enforcement activities, such as, 
for example, an inherently dangerous assignment.  The Customs Service 
also propose to extend such services to family members of its 
employees adversely affected by traumatic incidents involving death or 
serious injury to Customs Service employees in the line of duty.

Customs Service employees perform a variety of law enforcement 
activities ranging from the routine to the inherently dangerous.  
During the course of their law enforcement duties, Customs Service 
employees may be subject to death threats and/or threats of violence.  
Apart from the stress and anxiety normally associated with law 
enforcement work, death threats or threats of violence directed at 
Customs Service employees or members of their families can have a 
significant impact on an employee and the performance of his or her 
duties and be the source of stress and anxiety for their families.  To 
help mitigate these concerns, the Customs Service proposes to provide 
psychological assessment and referral services to family members.  The 
Customs Service believes that the provision of such services would 
reassure employees that their families will receive necessary 
assistance obtaining help, thereby benefiting employee morale, 
recruitment, retention, and performance.

The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City exemplifies 
another situation where the Customs Service proposes to offer 
psychological assessment and referral services to family members of 
its employees.  Not surprisingly, the impact of "traumatic incidents" 
where Customs Service employees suffer death or serious injury in the 
line of duty falls particularly hard not only on fellow workers, but 
also on their families.  In the face of such tragedies, the Customs 
Service believes that it is important that its employees and their 
families feel that the Customs Service is responding to such tragedies 
in a humane and helpful fashion.  Accordingly, the Customs Service 
believes that even apart from the basic humaneness of its proposal, 
the extension of psychological assessment and referral services to 
employees' family members in such a situation would rebound to its 
benefit through improved employee retention, performance, and 
recruitment.

ANALYSIS 

A basic tenet of appropriation law is that appropriated funds may only 
be used for the purposes for which appropriated.  31 U.S.C.  sec.  1301(a) 
(1994).  This does not mean that an agency may incur only those 
expenses specified explicitly in an appropriation.  To so require 
would be clearly impractical given the relative levels of generality 
that Congress uses to provide funding for the various agency programs 
and activities.  Thus, our decisions are replete with examples of 
authorized expenditures that are neither specifically nor explicitly 
authorized in an appropriation act but which are reasonably necessary 
to carry out an authorized function or which materially contribute to 
the effective accomplishment of an authorized function.  65 Comp. Gen. 
738, 740 (1986) (Refreshments may be considered a necessary expense 
incident to an agency's awards ceremony); B-223608, Dec. 19, 1988 
(Appropriated funds may not be used to purchase ice scrapers imprinted 
with a safety slogan to promote agency safety programs); and 1 United 
States General Accounting Office Principles of Federal Appropriations 
Law, p. 4-14, (2d ed. 1991).  The "necessary expense" doctrine that 
supports the holdings in these decisions reflects a respect for an 
agency's legitimate exercise of discretion to determine how best to 
accomplish the objects of its appropriation.  Although not unlimited, 
it is a rule of reason and of deference.

Part and parcel of any necessary expense analysis is whether the 
expenditure in question is a personal or official one.  With respect 
to psychological assessments and referrals, we have generally 
considered such medical services as personal to the employee.  Hence, 
absent statutory authority to the contrary, appropriated funds 
generally may not be used for such expenses.  B-253159, November 22, 
1993.

We have, however, recognized exceptions to the general rule.  We have 
not objected to expenditures for employee medical expenses where the 
agency can demonstrate that the expenses in question primarily benefit 
the agency.  For example, prior to the enactment of the preventive 
health statute, 5 U.S.C.  sec.  7901, authorizing agencies to use available 
appropriations to establish programs to promote and maintain the 
physical and mental health and fitness of their employees, we held 
that the Army's Chemical Warfare Service may pay for periodic physical 
examinations to detect early signs of arsenic poisoning in its 
laboratory employees.  22 Comp. Gen. 32 (1942).  We rationalized the 
expense as primarily for the benefit of the government in order to 
avoid work interruptions resulting from absenteeism due to illness or  
the inability to recruit and retain qualified personnel.  Id.  See 
also 41 Comp. Gen.  387 (1961); 30 Comp. Gen. 387 (1951); 26 Comp. 
Gen. 544 (1947); and 23 Comp. Gen. 888 (1944).

We have extended this rationale to cases where the recipient of the 
medical services is not a government employee.  65 Comp. Gen. 677 
(1986); 29 Comp. Gen. 111 (1949); and 23 Comp. Gen. 746 (1944).  In 
each of the cited decisions, we concluded that the government was the 
principal or primary beneficiary of the expenditure.  We have reached 
the same result in cases not involving medical expenses.  In 71 Comp. 
Gen. 9 (1991), we concluded that the Federal Aviation Administration 
could reimburse the travel expenses of an employee's spouse who 
attended State Department security training prior to a permanent duty 
assignment overseas.  We viewed the travel and training as directly 
serving the government's interest.  Id. at 11.  Similarly, in 69 Comp. 
Gen. 38 (1989), we held that an agency could reimburse as a necessary 
expense of an awards ceremony the expenses of an employee's spouse to 
attend an awards ceremony honoring the employee.  The agency's 
determination that the spouse's attendance at the ceremony would 
further the purposes of the awards program was adequate to qualify the 
expense as necessary under the "necessary expense" doctrine as we have 
developed that concept in our decisions and as Congress has 
incorporated it in the Government Employees' Incentive Awards Act, 5 
U.S.C.  sec.  4503 (1994).

In light of the above decisions, we believe that the Customs Service 
may reasonably conclude that the extension of psychological assessment 
and referral services to family members of Customs Service employees 
in the circumstances described above will primarily benefit the 
Customs Service.  The Customs Service has determined that its law 
enforcement activities and traumatic incidents involving death or 
serious injury to employees in the line of duty are the source of 
stress and anxiety to its employee's family members.  The Customs 
Service has further concluded that if not addressed, the stress and 
anxiety suffered by its employees' family members negatively impacts 
the accomplishment of its mission through reduced job performance, 
reduced employee retention, and increased difficulty recruiting 
qualified employees.  Accordingly, based on these determinations, so 
long as the Customs Service limits the circumstances in which it 
provides psychological assessment and referral services to those 
determined to be work-related, we would not object to the provision of 
these services to its employees' family members.

Comptroller General
of the United States

1. See 5 U.S.C.  sec.  7901 which authorizes the use of appropriated funds 
for preventive health measures for federal employees in certain 
circumstance.  The Custom Service proposes to provide service to 
employees' family members who are not covered by section 7901.