Investigators tell CBP to improve budget estimates for new agents
The US Border Patrol could do a better job of tracking the costs of how much money it takes to recruit, hire, train, equip and deploy a single Border Patrol agent, congressional investigators stated in a letter to Congress Monday.
That cost estimate, referred to by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as the Position Cost Model (PCM), is important because funding for Border Patrol agents has increased dramatically in the last three fiscal years.
In September 2006, US Border Patrol had about 12,300 agents in its ranks but that increased to 18,875 by April 2009--a growth of about 53 percent. Proportionally, total funding for the agency increased from about $1.8 billion in fiscal 2006 to $3.5 billion in fiscal 2009. By the end of September 2009, US Border Patrol will grow to 19,700 agents, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Each new hire for Border Patrol will cost the agency $170,360 in PCM in fiscal 2007 by CBP estimates, GAO reported, which is an increase of about $11,000 over fiscal 2009. The increases come from an additional $3,000 in the cost of purchasing a vehicle for a new agent, another additional $3,000 for security clearance and background investigations, and about $5,000 in rental payments for recruitment facilities.
GAO did not find CBP's data for these costs to be reliable, however, as it could not completely duplicate them. In fiscal 2009, GAO found, CBP submitted a comprehensive report of the PCM costs for 16 of 28 cost items related to a new Border Patrol hire.
"For 16 of the 28 cost items (which accounted for 49 percent of the total fiscal year 2009 PCM dollar amount), CBP used relevant historical cost data, applied approved ratios and inflation factors to help ensure that specific cost item estimates were accurate and retained appropriate documentation, consistent with best practices," GAO wrote to Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). "We validated the PCM cost estimate for these 16 items using the documentation and formulas CBP provided, arriving at the same amount or within $20 of the PCM amount."
But GAO could not do the same for the remaining 12 cost items because they did not follow best practices requiring them to be so well documented that they are easily followed and replicated, the agency said.
"As a result, we could not determine the reliability of these 12 cost items, which accounted for 43 percent ($152 million) of CBP's $351.2 million budget estimate for recruiting, hiring, training, equipping, and deploying an additional 2,200 Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2009," the GAO letter said.
To resolve the problem, the CBP Commissioner should develop guidelines for the development of the PCM data and instructions on how to maintain documentation of the data for audits. In a response to GAO, the Department of Homeland Security agreed with the recommendation.
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