Customs Service

B-270446 Feb 11, 1997 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights To family members of employees who are adversely affected by work-related incidents associated with their law enforcement activities. 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. The Customs Service believes that the provision of such services would reassure employees that their families will receive necessary assistance obtaining help. 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. View Decision Matter of: Customs Service File: B-270446 Date: February 11, 1997 DIGEST 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.