Bureau of Land Management: Payment of Pocatello Field Office, B-290901, December 16, 2002

B-290901 Dec 16, 2002 Jump To VIEW DECISION RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights Were not authorized and may not be paid with federal funds. BLM's appropriated funds are not available to pay for the services because of the statutory prohibition on procuring such services from a commercial vendor. BACKGROUND When the BLM Pocatello field office was named as a party to a lawsuit in the federal district court. The records were delivered to Kinko's on November 28 and one copy was returned to the office for Bate Stamping on December 1. The first copy was paid for by credit card ($2. 109.90) by an authorized charge card holder. /1/ The record was sent back to Kinko's and an additional eight copies were completed on December 4. Collating) are required to be obtained through an established Government Printing Office (GPO) contract. View Decision Bureau of Land Management: Payment of Pocatello Field Office, B-290901, December 16, 2002 DIGEST DECISION A certifying officer of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Department of the Interior, has requested an advance decision under 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3529 regarding the payment of photocopying services incurred by the Pocatello Field Office in Idaho. For the following reasons, we conclude that absent a waiver, BLM's appropriated funds are not available to pay for the services because of the statutory prohibition on procuring such services from a commercial vendor. BACKGROUND When the BLM Pocatello field office was named as a party to a lawsuit in the federal district court, the field office assigned staff members to help the Interior Solicitor's office prepare documents needed for the lawsuit. The documents needed filled six large boxes and included monitoring files, case files, allotment files, trespass files, technical documents, drawings, photographs and odd-sized maps. Each document needed to be "Bate Stamped," meaning each page in the documents needed to be stamped, numbered sequentially by page and recorded into an index using a spreadsheet format. The Interior attorney sent an e-mail message to the Pocatello staff member in charge as well as others at the field office on November 20, 2001, requesting that three copies of the material be provided to him by November 28. However, work on assembling the documents did not begin until November 26 when the staff member in charge returned from leave. When notified of the delay, the Interior attorney agreed to an extension to December 10 for at least three copies of the files. Given the volume of records involved and the tight timeframes, the field office staff decided to use a local Kinko's to copy the documents. The records were delivered to Kinko's on November 28 and one copy was returned to the office for Bate Stamping on December 1. The first copy was paid for by credit card ($2,109.90) by an authorized charge card holder. /1/ The record was sent back to Kinko's and an additional eight copies were completed on December 4. The bill for the additional copies came to $19,501.93. BLM has not paid that bill. The BLM Idaho State Office issued guidance to all employees setting forth the procedures for obtaining printing and photocopying services, including the following: "All printing services (printing, photocopying, binding, and collating) are required to be obtained through an established Government Printing Office (GPO) contract, or waivers can be granted from GPO. These waivers can normally be obtained with a simple phone call . . . In-house copy machines are to be used only for simple copy jobs (300 copied pages or less). The State Office has a local GPO photocopy contract which must be used for the larger jobs. This contract includes many services and, in most cases, can deliver in 24 hours." BLM Instruction Memorandum No. ID-2000-054, April 14, 2000. Since the Pocatello staff did not comply with these procedures in this case, the Pocatello Field Office submitted the procurement action for ratification of the unauthorized commitment to the Idaho State Office chief contracting officer and the State Director in accordance with BLM regulations. The regulations also include requesting concurrence from the Interior Solicitor for amounts exceeding $2,500. BLM Manual 1510-1.602-3, June 15, 2000, and BLM Instruction Memorandum No. ID-201-004, Oct. 11, 2000. The ratifying officials declined to ratify the purchase of Kinko's services based on their determination that 44 U.S.C. Sec. 501 and Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 8.8 require agencies to obtain printing and duplicating services through the Government Printing Office (GPO) or a GPO contract vendor in the absence of a waiver for the services to be performed at a commercial firm. "Ratification Action, Report of Unauthorized Procurement, Bureau of Land Management Printing at Kinkos," signed by Julie Lewis, State Office Chief Contracting Officer (May 17, 2002), Kenneth M. Sebby, Solicitor (May 22, 2002) and Jonathan S.