Capitol Police's Own Auditor Questions $580,596 in Outside-DC Pay
Summary
The United States Capitol Police built a locality-pay bump for officers assigned to pricier San Francisco but never built the mirror-image cut for cheaper Tampa and Brunswick, Georgia, and pays four agents a recurring 10 percent bonus its own governing statute doesn't authorize. Its inspector general found the two practices produced $580,596 in questioned costs across ten employees over the January 2021-June 2025 review period.
A pay table built for one city
USCP runs one set of pay tables, calibrated to the Washington, D.C. area, for every sworn and civilian employee -- including the handful stationed at Regional Satellite Offices⧉ in San Francisco and Tampa and at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia. When it created a specialty pay adjustment for the San Francisco office, USCP acknowledged that a higher-cost city warranted more pay -- but it never built the mirror-image adjustment for Tampa and Brunswick, where the federal government's own locality-pay tables run lower than DC's.
Under the Office of Personnel Management's 2025 pay tables⧉, a GS-15, Step 1 employee based in DC earned $167,603 that year; the same grade and step in Tampa or Brunswick earned $146,481 -- a gap of about $21,000, or 12.6 percent. USCP's pay scale doesn't reflect that gap for the eight employees who worked in Tampa and Brunswick during the review period, and the calculated they were paid $438,643 more than they would have been had USCP applied that same percentage difference.
View data as table
| Finding 1: unadjusted locality pay (Tampa & Brunswick, 8 employees) | 438,643 | USCP didn't lower pay for lower-cost-of-living duty stations, Jan. 2021-June 2025. |
|---|---|---|
| Finding 2: unauthorized relocation allowance (SF & Tampa, 4 employees) | 141,953 | A recurring 10% payment the OIG says the governing statute doesn't authorize, Oct. 2021-June 2025. |
A relocation bonus that never stopped
The second finding turns on the difference between a bonus and an allowance. USCP's governing statute, 2 U.S.C. § 1927⧉, authorizes a one-time "Relocation Bonus" -- paid as a lump sum, typically before a newly hired officer starts -- to offset the cost of moving for the job. What the found instead, for Regional Satellite Agents in San Francisco and Tampa, was a recurring "Relocation Allowance": 10 percent of annual basic pay, paid year after year rather than once. Neither the statute nor the Capitol Police Board's regulations define or authorize that kind of ongoing payment. From October 2021 through June 2025, USCP paid $141,953 in relocation allowance to the four RSA employees in San Francisco and Tampa.
View data as table
| Washington, DC | 167,603 | OPM's DC locality pay table, GS-15 Step 1, 2025. |
|---|---|---|
| Tampa / Brunswick ("Rest of U.S.") | 146,481 | OPM's Rest-of-U.S. catch-all locality table, GS-15 Step 1, 2025 -- about $21,000 (12.6%) lower than DC. |
The OIG's report⧉ doesn't allege fraud -- it flags a pay system that never adjusted to match its own logic. Its four recommendations ask USCP to determine whether the $580,596 is recoverable, evaluate its outside-DC pay practices against federal best practices, weigh whether to build separate pay tables for non-DC duty stations, and bring the relocation allowance into statutory compliance. The publicly released version of the report does not include a stated management response to any of the four.
- $580,596 in questioned costs, USCP's own inspector general found, in pay to employees at the department's three outside-Washington posts -- San Francisco, Tampa, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia -- from January 2021 through June 2025.
- USCP never built a downward locality-pay adjustment to match the upward one it created for San Francisco: the eight employees in lower-cost Tampa and Brunswick were paid $438,643 more than 's own DC-to-Rest-of-U.S. pay gap -- about 12.6 percent for a GS-15, Step 1 employee -- would produce.
- Four Regional Satellite Agents in San Francisco and Tampa got a recurring 10 percent "Relocation Allowance" -- $141,953 worth from October 2021 through June 2025 -- a payment the says the department's governing statute authorizes only as a one-time lump sum, not a recurring bonus.
- The 's four recommendations ask USCP to determine whether the $580,596 is recoverable, evaluate its pay practices against federal best practices, weigh separate pay tables for non-DC posts, and bring the relocation allowance into statutory compliance; the publicly released report doesn't show a management response.
The $580,596 figure is the 's own "questioned costs" -- an amount it says wasn't clearly necessary, reasonable, or authorized, not a confirmed overpayment the government has recovered. Recommendation 1 asks USCP to make that determination itself and decide whether to recover any part of it. The individual employees affected are not named in the report and aren't named here; this piece addresses USCP's pay-administration practices as an institution, not any employee's compensation.
Sources(1) ▾
- United States Capitol Police Office of Inspector General, Management Advisory Report: Pay for Employees Assigned to Locations Outside of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area (Report Number OIG-2026-06) (2026-01-22) — The USCP 's signed memorandum to the Chief of Police, dated January 22, 2026 and approved for public release by the Capitol Police Board on June 2, 2026, posted on oversight.gov. Documents two pay-practice findings for USCP employees assigned outside the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area -- unadjusted locality pay for lower-cost duty stations, and a recurring relocation payment the says the governing statute doesn't authorize -- totaling $580,596 in questioned costs across the January 2021-June 2025 review period. oversight.gov · original document
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The Capitol Police's own inspector general⧉ found that the department gives some officers assigned outside Washington a locality-pay raise for a pricier city but never a matching cut for a cheaper one -- and pays four agents a recurring 10 percent bonus its own governing statute doesn't authorize. Together the two practices produced $580,596 in questioned costs from January 2021 through June 2025.