TITLE: B-305864, United States Capitol Police--Employee Shuttle, January 5, 2006
BNUMBER: B-305864
DATE: January 5, 2006
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B-305864, United States Capitol Police--Employee Shuttle, January 5, 2006

   Decision

   Matter of: United States Capitol Police--Employee Shuttle

   File: B-305864

   Date:  January 5, 2006

   DIGEST

   The United States Capitol Police (USCP) may not use appropriated funds for
   a shuttle bus service from its parking lot to the Fairchild Building, or
   any other USCP building, where the purpose of the service is to facilitate
   the commutes of USCP employees. Commuting costs are personal expenses,
   and, absent statutory authority, appropriations are not available for
   personal expenses. Where, however, USCP establishes a legitimate
   operational need for a building-to-building shuttle, there is no objection
   to employees' incidental use of the service as part of the home-to-work
   commute, so long as such use does not result in additional expense to the
   government.

   DECISION

   The United States Capitol Police (USCP) asks whether it may use
   appropriated funds for a shuttle bus to transport USCP employees from
   USCP-provided parking to a new USCP facility, the Fairchild Building.
   Letter from John T. Caulfield, General Counsel, USCP, to Anthony H.
   Gamboa, General Counsel, GAO, July 7, 2005 (Caulfield Letter). USCP also
   asks whether, in the event such use of funds is not proper, it may use
   appropriated funds for a shuttle to transport employees from the USCP
   headquarters building to the Fairchild Building. Id.  In our view, USCP
   may not use appropriated funds for shuttle bus service, whether from the
   parking lot to the Fairchild Building or from headquarters to the
   Fairchild Building, where the purpose of the shuttle is to enable
   employees to complete their commutes. USCP, however, may provide shuttle
   service from its headquarters to other USCP buildings, including the
   Fairchild Building, so long as it establishes a legitimate operational
   need for such a service.

   USCP states that it is moving several component offices from its
   headquarters building on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol complex, near
   which employees are provided parking, to the Fairchild Building on the
   House side, where adequate parking is not available. Caulfield Letter.
   Whereas in the past employees (primarily USCP officers) would walk from
   their cars to the headquarters building at the start of their shifts for
   their daily assignments, they now start their shifts by reporting to the
   Fairchild Building. Id.  USCP states that until it is able to acquire
   parking facilities close to the Fairchild Building, many employees who
   continue to use the USCP parking on the Senate side will need
   transportation to the Fairchild Building. USCP asserts that the Fairchild
   Building is not within a reasonable walking distance of either the current
   parking location or the headquarters building. The agency also indicates
   that it may be able to lease parking facilities near, but still not within
   walking distance of, the Fairchild Building.

   USCP suggests that since it is proper to use appropriated funds to provide
   parking in the first instance, it should be proper to use appropriated
   funds to transport employees from the parking lots to the Fairchild
   Building. USCP is concerned, however, that the trip from either the
   parking lot or USCP headquarters to the Fairchild Building might be viewed
   as part of an employee's commute so that any attendant expense would not
   payable from appropriated funds.

   Initially, we point out that the fact that USCP provides parking for its
   employees is not relevant to the issue here--the propriety of shuttling
   employees from the parking lot to USCP buildings. The propriety of the use
   of appropriated funds for a parking lot-to-workplace shuttle turns on the
   application of a longstanding rule regarding the nature of commuting
   costs.

   It is well-established that an employee's commute between home and work is
   a personal expense, and personal expenses are not payable from
   appropriated funds, absent specific statutory authority. 27 Comp. Gen. 1
   (1947); 16 Comp. Gen. 64 (1936). For executive branch entities, the rule
   is codified at 31 U.S.C. sect. 1344(a)(1), which limits the use of
   appropriated funds for passenger vehicles to "official purposes," and
   provides that, with certain exceptions not applicable here, transporting
   an employee "between such individual's residence and such individual's
   place of employment is not transportation for an official purpose."[1]
   This limitation applies to any portion of the trip between home and work.
   B-261729, Apr. 1, 1996. The Naval Air Systems Command, for example, could
   not use appropriated funds for a bus to transport, on a daily basis,
   employees from their then-current headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to
   relocated headquarters in St. Mary's County, Maryland.[2] Id. Once the
   Command moved its offices, the place of employment for its employees would
   be the new location: "[a]ll of the usual expenses incurred by an employee
   prior to his arrival at that location, whether or not he makes an
   intermediate stop at a different location, are commuting expenses." Id.

   In our view, an employee's arrival at a parking lot cannot be considered
   the end of the commute. Rather, a parking lot is simply an intermediate
   stop--like a subway or bus stop--within the totality of the commute from
   home to office. For purposes of section 1344(a)(1), legislative history
   suggests that the end of the commute, or "place of employment," is "the
   primary place where an officer or employee performs his or her business,
   trade or occupation, and includes, but is not limited to, an official duty
   station, home base, or headquarters. It includes any place where an
   employee is assigned to work. . . ." H.R. Rep. No. 99-451, at 7 (1985),
   accompanying Pub. L. No. 99-550, 100 Stat. 3067 (Oct. 27, 1986). USCP
   advises that its employees now report for work and daily assignments at
   the Fairchild Building. Therefore, the trip from the parking lot to the
   Fairchild Building is part of the employee's commute, and thus a personal
   expense, so that USCP may not use appropriated funds for shuttle bus
   service from Senate-side or other parking lots.

   There is no objection, however, to the use of appropriated funds for a
   shuttle bus from USCP headquarters to the Fairchild and other USCP
   buildings, so long as USCP establishes a legitimate operational need to
   shuttle persons among those buildings and its purpose is not to aid
   employees' commutes. See 16 Comp. Gen. 64, discussing "official business;"
   31 U.S.C. sect. 1344(a)(1), discussing "official purposes." In that
   circumstance, there is no objection to an employee's incidental use of
   such shuttle service on a space-available basis, and so long as it does
   not result in additional expense to the government, even though the
   employee may not yet have reported to work at the Fairchild Building or
   may already have completed his or her daily assignment. However, to the
   extent that the purpose of the shuttle is to transport employees to their
   workplaces, that is, to complete their commutes from home, the use of
   appropriated funds for the service would not be proper. See B-210555.3,
   Feb. 7, 1984 (". . . every employee is responsible for his or her own
   transportation to the headquarters station or to the site or office where
   the employee's work is to begin . . ."[3]).

   A 1979 case, B-195073, Nov. 21, 1979, is illustrative in this regard. The
   Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) allowed some of its employees,
   engaged in field work, to drive government vehicles to and from work. FBI
   asked whether other FBI employees could ride to and from work in the
   vehicle's empty seats, essentially carpooling with the field agent. We saw
   no objection to FBI's proposal. B-195073, Nov. 21, 1979. We concluded that
   because of the nature of the field agent's work, the "vehicle is being
   driven primarily for the benefit of the government. Any use by other
   employees on a space available basis is only incidental to the government
   purpose, provided, of course, that there is no additional expenditure of
   time or money by the government in order to accommodate these riders." Id.
   Similarly, so long as USCP establishes a legitimate operational need for
   shuttle service among USCP buildings, there is no objection to any
   incidental use of the service by USCP employees to complete their
   home-to-work commutes that impose no additional cost to the government.

   In sum, the general rule that an employee's commute between home and work
   is a personal expense precludes the use of appropriated funds for shuttle
   bus service whose purpose is to complete the employees' home-to-work
   commute to the Fairchild Building. Incidental use as described above
   raises no objection.

   /signed/

   Anthony H. Gamboa
   General Counsel

   ------------------------

   [1] While section 1344 applies to executive branch entities, see 31 U.S.C.
   sect. 1344(g)(2), the principle embodied in section 1344, that
   appropriations are available only for official purposes and, without
   specific statutory authority, not for personal expenses such as
   home-to-work transportation applies equally to USCP appropriations. See
   generally 31 U.S.C. sect. 1301(a)(1) ("appropriations shall be applied
   only to the objects for which the appropriations were made except as
   otherwise provided by law"). For that reason, section 1344, its
   legislative history, and case law applying it offer a useful analytical
   construct in this case.

   [2] The Command proposed to equip the bus with office equipment and
   designate it as the riders' official workplace pursuant to the
   government's flexiplace program; we noted that flexiplace guidance did not
   recognize a mobile work site as a flexiplace option.

   [3] This decision responded to an agency's suggestion that an official
   entitled to be driven from his headquarters to a particular site or office
   could be picked up at home, bypass his normal headquarters stop, and be
   deposited directly at the site or office where his activity was to
   commence.