Susan Collins: “on Tuesday, December 20, I introduced a simple but important bill that would allow an existing General Services…”

“on Tuesday, December 20, I introduced a simple but important bill that would allow an existing General Services Administration, GSA, program for streamlined Government employee relocations to continue for an additional 4 years. Under a pilot program enacted in 1998, government agencies including GSA, Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Defense have been able to relocate staff in a more economical manner than what can be done under the existing Federal relocation regulations. This innovative and cost saving test program, known as the Voluntary Relocation Program, provides Government agencies additional flexibility to relocate personnel to meet mission critical staffing needs and, according to Customs and Border Protection, has resulted in a cost savings of nearly $25 million in their organization alone. I am very pleased that Senators Lieberman and Akaka have joined me in cosponsoring this legislation. The Department of Homeland Security began using the Voluntary Relocation Program to relocate hundreds of Border Patrol agents to critical U.S. border locations after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As part of its new mission to protect national borders from security threats, agents from the Office of Border Patrol, OBP, eagerly volunteered to transfer to border locations deemed most vulnerable. However, these transfers took a long time to process and were very costly under the Federal travel regulations, FTR.…”