The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is under fire after reportedly breaking the law to inflate status and salaries of administrative staffers.
According to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, ATF improperly and deliberately misclassified thousands of administrative positions as “law enforcement” for decades, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
"According to legally protected disclosures made to our offices, ATF management was notified as early as 2018 that the agency’s decades-long practice of misclassifying non-law enforcement positions as law enforcement, including leadership positions, was in violation of the law, but ATF failed to take corrective action," Grassley and Ernst wrote in a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach. Attorney General Merrick Garland was also sent a copy of the letter.
The misclassification was brought to the attention of ATF leadership by whistleblowers and was ignored.
"The whistleblowers also allege the 91 misclassified positions OPM identified may not represent the full scope of ATF’s illegally misclassified positions. It is alleged that hundreds of ATF employees from across the country were hired under individual position descriptions OPM identified as misclassified; however, a full audit or review has not been conducted to ensure that all the employees in these positions are performing law enforcement duties and not unlawfully receiving enhanced benefits and pay at the cost to taxpayers," the letter continues.
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"Therefore, while OSC found that ATF’s misconduct led to overpaying employees up to $20 million from 2016-2021, the true cost to taxpayers could be substantially more. For example, it is alleged that up to 800 employees across ATF Divisions and Field Offices still occupy positions OPM identified as misclassified. Even if half of these positions are misclassified, during the five-year period reviewed by OPM, ATF would have wasted close to $88 million in taxpayer dollars, more than four times the figure OSC identified," the Senators detail.
Grassley and Ernst are demanding ATF "conduct a comprehensive evaluation and review of all the employees occupying the misclassified position descriptions OPM identified, and look back further than the five years to understand the full scope of ATF’s systematic wrongdoing."
"No amount of waste of taxpayer dollars is acceptable. Taxpayers deserve to know how much oftheir money was wasted due to ATF’s failure to follow the law," they said.
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