In the Matter of the Petition by ) December 15, 1997 ) ELSA RAMOS ) 3023 Ellis Street ) ) at ) ) Berkeley, CA 94703-2408 ) P.S. Docket No. DCA 97-179 APPEARANCE FOR PETITIONER: Bess Lewis P. O. Box 5108 Richmond, CA 94805-0108 APPEARANCE FOR RESPONDENT: Bonnie Johnson Labor Relations Specialist United States Postal Service 1675 7th Street, Room 419 Oakland, CA 94615-9405
FINAL DECISION UNDER THE DEBT COLLECTION ACT OF 1982
Petitioner, Elsa Ramos, filed a Petition requesting a hearing under the Debt Collection Act of 1982, as amended, 5 U.S.C. §5514(a), after receiving a Notice of Involuntary Administrative Salary Offsets from Respondent, United States Postal Service. The Notice informed Petitioner that Respondent intended to deduct a total of $1,654.84 from her salary to make up a shortage discovered in an audit of the unit reserve stock at Landscape Station for which Petitioner was responsible.
An oral hearing was held at which evidence was presented and the parties made closing arguments in support of their positions.
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. In January 1997, Petitioner became the customer services manager of the Landscape Station in Berkeley, California, replacing a manager who was being assigned to a four or five month detail as a route supervisor. As the manager, she was to become the custodian of the station’s unit reserve, which consists of stamps and other accountable paper held for distribution to the window clerks as needed. (Transcript of Hearing, pages ("Tr.") 11, 71-72). There had been a number of problems with the financial management of the station before her arrival, and she immediately began to work to identify shortages and overages in the station’s accounts, to clear notices the station had been issued regarding earlier financial discrepancies and to absorb the stock of vacant credits (Tr. 71).
2. Before her assignment to Landscape Station, Petitioner had acted as a station manager on a number of occasions, and from 1993 to her assignment to Landscape she had managed the finance section at the much larger Berkeley Post Office (Tr. 11, 21-22, 70). In that position, she had been responsible for managing the main stock, supervising clerks, financial closeout at the end of the day and resolving financial discrepancies (Tr. 21, 70-71). She had never been given formal financial training, but she had learned financial management on the job (Tr. 17, 19, 70). The Berkeley Postmaster considered Petitioner a capable employee who had done an excellent job running the finance section at Berkeley (Tr. 17-19).
3. As part of the transfer of the unit reserve from the former manager to her, Petitioner and her predecessor counted the unit reserve stock to confirm the amount of stock on hand. A shortage was disclosed, but after making adjustments and assigning the shortage to her predecessor, Petitioner assumed responsibility for the unit reserve stock, which was then in balance. (Tr. 15, 72-73).
4. Although she assumed responsibility for the unit reserve stock, Petitioner did not change the combination to the safe in which she stored the unit reserve stock. She had authority to change the combination, but she did not do so until it was brought to her attention by auditors who counted her stock in February. (Tr. 15-16, 75-77). Postal Service regulations required that she change the combination upon assuming responsibility for the unit reserve so that only she would have access to the stock (Tr. 15-16; Handbook F-1, Post Office Accounting Procedures (1996), Sections 372.5, 416.2, 422).
5. On January 17, 1997, a clerk in the Landscape Station transferred nonsalable stock in the amount of $1,654.02 to Petitioner. The stock was eventually to be sent in for destruction. (Stipulation at Tr. 7; Respondent’s Exhibit ("RX") D).
6. On January 30 and 31, 1997, Petitioner sent nonsalable stock from the unit reserve to the Oakland Stamp Destruction Committee ("SDC") to be destroyed (Tr. 62; Petitioner’s Exhibit ("PX") 5). Petitioner and a witness counted the stock to be destroyed and listed the quantity and denomination of each type of stock and a total amount for the shipment on PS Form 3238. They then sealed the stock in three cartons and sent it to the SDC. (Tr. 81, 83; PX 5; RX J).
7. When the shipment reached the SDC, it was secured until the three-member SDC assembled to count it. At that time, the members of the committee for the first time opened the sealed shipment and counted the stock. (Tr. 40-41, 66). If during their count of stock, the members of the SDC disagree on the amount of any type of stamps in a shipment, they count and recount until they all agree on the amount of stock of each type sent in (Tr. 42). Regarding the count of Petitioner’s shipment, where the count of the SDC differed from Petitioner’s, they lined out her figures on the Form 3238 submitted with the shipment and entered theirs and corrected the subtotal for each affected page and the shipment total. (Tr. 33-35, 43-49; PX 6).
8. A number of discrepancies were found between the 3238 and the actual amount of stock shipped, but the net effect of the committee’s corrections was to increase the value of the shipment over what Petitioner had listed on the 3238 by $95.91 (Tr. 33-35, 58-60; PX 5, 6; RX K). Petitioner had listed a total of $63,684.13, and the committee found that the boxes actually contained stock valued at $63,780.04 (PX 5, 6; RX K).
9. Because there was a discrepancy between Petitioner’s count and the committee’s, the SDC chairman called Petitioner’s office and left a message for her to call him regarding the redeemed stock (Tr. 63). She did not receive the message (Tr. 73, 80, 89), and never called him back. If they had spoken, the chairman would have offered Petitioner an opportunity to recount the stock on her own to confirm the committee’s figures (Tr. 49-52). The committee’s consistent practice was to attempt to contact those submitting stock before destroying it when a difference was discovered between the SDC’s count and the stock listed on the 3238. Many of those so contacted conducted a recount when the SDC reported that it had received less stock than the station recorded on the 3238 as sent, but submitters never requested a recount when the committee advised that it found more stock in the shipment than the station had listed on the 3238. (Tr. 29, 42, 49-50, 62-64, 67).
10. On March 4, 1997, the stock Petitioner submitted was destroyed (Tr. 54). At about that time, the SDC sent its corrected version of the 3238 back to the station (Tr. 68). Petitioner did not receive her copy of the 3238 until March 24, at which time she adjusted her accountability by the amount shown (Tr. 74, 81, 89).1
11. Section 457 of the F-1 Handbook, Post Office Accounting Procedures (November 1996), addresses the procedures to be followed in the event of discrepancies between the count of the SDC and that of the unit submitting stock for destruction. If the unit verbally agrees with the committee, the committee makes the corrections and can destroy the stock. However, "[i]f the unit does not verbally agree with the stamp stock destruction committee," the committee is to "return Form 3238 and the stock to the unit by registered mail." (PX 12).
12. On February 5, 1997, Petitioner and a supervisor counted Petitioner’s stock, recording the results, including the number of each type of stamp separately, on PS Form 3294, Cash and Stamp Stock Count and Summary (Tr. 24, 26, 31; RX H). The $63,684.13 listed on Petitioner’s 3238 for the January 30 and 31 shipment (Findings 6, 8) was listed as "Stock in Transit" on the 3294 and was added to the value of the stock on hand as actually counted to establish the total stamp stock (Tr. 26-27, 32; RX H). When this total figure was compared with the amount of stock that the records of the station showed should be in the unit reserve, an apparent shortage of $1,654.84 was disclosed (Tr. 25-28, 74; RX H, I).2 Petitioner demonstrated her agreement with the count by signing the PS Form 3294 (RX H).
13. In Section 141, the F-1 Handbook describes the circumstances under which an employee will be held liable for a shortage in an assigned credit: "Employees are held strictly accountable for any loss unless evidence establishes that they followed the postal procedures established when performing their duties." (RX G).
14. On February 20, 1997, Respondent issued Petitioner a Letter of Indebtedness asserting a debt of $1,654.84 (Tr. 12; RX H2). Respondent issued Petitioner a Notice of Involuntary Administrative Salary Offsets in that amount that Petitioner received on May 14, 1997 (PX 4). Petitioner requested reconsideration on May 19, 1997 (RX A, H3), and filed a request for a hearing which was docketed on May 29, 1997.
DECISION
Respondent argues that it has demonstrated a loss by showing that there was a shortage in the unit reserve stock for which Petitioner was responsible. Petitioner challenges collection of the shortage, contending that the stamp destruction committee violated procedures when it failed to contact her regarding the discrepancies between the committee’s count and hers before the stock was destroyed. She also argues that she was given inadequate training in financial operations before being assigned such duties. Respondent counters that the discrepancy regarding the redeemed stock does not affect Petitioner’s shortage because the stamp destruction committee found there to be more stock in the shipment than Petitioner had listed. Finally, Respondent argues that Petitioner had adequate on-the-job training in financial management and that her failure to change the combination to the safe when she accepted responsibility for the unit reserve stock indicates that she failed to follow established Postal Service procedures regarding security for the stock.
The unit reserve stock was in balance in January when Petitioner accepted responsibility for it, and when it was counted on February 5, 1997, there was a shortage of $1,559.23 (Findings 3, 12). In the February 5 count, the stock that Petitioner had sent to the SDC in January was considered "In Transit" and was treated as if it had been physically in the unit reserve (Findings 6-9, 12). Therefore, the alleged failure of the SDC to follow its procedures to obtain Petitioner’s verbal agreement before destroying the stock (Findings 8-11) would have had no effect on the shortage in the Landscape Station stock. Furthermore, as the difference between the committee’s count and Petitioner’s was minor and in her favor, it is unlikely she would have sought to recount the stock (Finding 9).
Initially, Petitioner suggested that the shortage might have resulted from her acceptance of the clerk’s nonsalable stock in about the same amount as the unit reserve shortage (Findings 5, 12) followed by Petitioner’s possible inclusion of that stock in her shipment to the SDC without listing it on the 3238. She did not pursue this argument at the hearing, and I am satisfied that the SDC accurately counted the stock, and that if the clerk’s stock was included in the shipment, it was listed and counted. Other than the closeness of the amount of the clerk’s transfer and the shortage, there is nothing to suggest that that transfer had any role in causing Petitioner’s shortage.
Accordingly, Respondent has established a loss in the amount of $1,559.23. Petitioner is strictly accountable for the loss unless the evidence shows that she followed Postal Service procedures in managing the unit reserve (Finding 13).
The evidence shows that Petitioner is a capable employee and that she did an excellent job as the finance manager at the Berkeley Post Office (Finding 2). However, Petitioner offered no evidence to show that in managing the unit reserve at Landscape Station she followed applicable Postal Service procedures. In fact, her failure to change the combination of the safe used for storing the stock suggests that, at least in that respect, she failed to follow established procedures (Finding 4). Petitioner contended that she was not aware of the requirement to change the combination, but the need for security of individual and unit credits must have been known to her through her previous experience with the finance section of the Berkeley Post Office (Finding 2), and establishing and preserving exclusive access to stock for which she was personally responsible should have been a natural step to take upon assuming responsibility for the stock.
Petitioner contends that she received inadequate formal training regarding management of the stock, but, regardless of the training she obtained at the time she began working in the finance area, by the time she assumed responsibility for the Landscape Station stock, at least three years after she began managing the finance section at Berkeley, she is presumed to be adequately trained. Additionally, she has not shown any relationship between a lack of training and particular problems she might have had managing the stock at Landscape Station.
Accordingly, Petitioner is liable for the loss from the unit reserve stock in the amount of $1,559.23, and that amount may be collected by offset from her salary. The Petition is denied.
Norman D. Menegat Administrative Judge