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Security Beat
Disorganization Within Border Patrol Cited For Faulty Budget
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By Tessa Gellerson
Customs and Border Protection has been using unreliable numbers to estimate the cost of recruiting, training and equipping thousands of newly deployed Border Patrol agents, the Government Accountability Office has found.
Since September 2006, the Border Patrol has experienced unprecedented growth, increasing its ranks by 53 percent. By April 2009, that amounted to an additional 6,575 agents for a total of 18,875. To keep pace, the agency’s funding swelled from $1.8 billion in 2006 to $3.5 billion today. CBP also submitted a request for an additional $362.5 million to employ 2,200 more agents by the end of 2009.
The GAO reviewed the increased budget proposal, evaluating its comprehensiveness, accuracy and documentation. The watchdog found the budget lacked sufficient documentation, used faulty figures or could not be replicated using data provided by the Border Patrol.
To come up with the estimates, CBP listed 93 “items” needed for each new agent. They included everything from handcuffs and belts, to major expenditures such as salary, benefits and vehicles. That came to $159,642 for each agent hired in fiscal year 2009, the report said. But this number was questionable, GAO found.
Faulty data and a lack of communication between departments within the CBP led to a series of errors in the budget, the office said. GAO sampled 28 items from the list and found that 12 of them did not have reliable cost estimates.
In one example, the CBP’s use of incorrect figures caused an unnecessary $1.8 million to be added to the budget request. Border Patrol agents assigned to certain geographic regions receive an increased percentage of salary, or “locality pay.” The CBP used a locality pay rate of about 16 percent, however upon questioning by the GAO, the CBP conceded that the actual pay rate was 14 percent, which led to an inflated budget.
Faulty math skills led to low estimates in some cases. CBP issues one FLIR night-vision device for every eight agents. The original $67,000 per unit cost in 2007, plus yearly adjustments for inflation, should have come to $8,870 for each new agent. But CBP claimed this came to $8,606.
GAO noted that disorganization within the CBP contributed to the budget’s discrepancies. In one case, documentation estimating the cost to recruit agents was simply lost. Border Patrol officials told GAO it “could not be located and that human resource management recruiting office staff who prepared the … cost calculation are no longer at the office.”
The CBP, in a written response to the report’s findings, recognized “a need for additional rigor” and acknowledged “that good management skills are timeless.”
CBP noted that the audit did not deem the budget “inaccurate,” “unreliable” or “invalid,” rather it simply could not provide GAO with adequate information to verify its budget estimates.
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