FINAL DECISION UNDER THE DEBT COLLECTION ACT OF 1982

Petitioner, Allen Rapoport, Supervisor of Customer Services at the Chatsworth, California Post Office, filed this Petition on December 16, 1996, after receiving a Notice of Involuntary Administrative Salary Offsets from his District Finance Manager on December 2, 1996. This Notice stated the Postal Service’s intention to withhold $4,500.00 from Petitioner’s salary to cover a shortage in the main stock at Chatsworth, discovered on July 2, 1996. The Petition asked for a decision on written submissions.

Respondent, the United States Postal Service, filed its Answer on December 31, 1996. By Order dated January 6, 1997, both parties were given until January 23, 1997 to file any additional evidence they wished to have considered, and until February 3, 1997 to submit any final arguments or comments. Respondent submitted some additional documents, including sworn statements of witnesses, and both parties submitted final arguments. All these materials have been considered.

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. Petitioner has been the custodian of the main stock at Chatsworth since sometime in 1993. He supervises ten window clerks.

2. The $4,500.00 shortage that precipitated this case was discovered by Petitioner, who immediately brought it to the attention of the postmaster, Barbara Bell. (Bell affidavit). Nothing in the record spells out exactly how this occurred. There is no inventory count, and nothing identifies what made up the missing $4,500.00 of stock, but it appears that some specific quantity of stamps was lost while Petitioner was preparing stock for distribution to window clerks on July 2, 1996.

3. The vault where stock is stored at Chatsworth contains four safes assigned to Petitioner for the main stock. Only Petitioner has the combinations to those safes. The clerks’ stock is also stored in the vault, but in another safe, separate from the main stock. When Petitioner removed stock from the main stock to prepare it for distribution to clerks, he used a table in the vault to separate it into the required allocations. This area was behind a lockable security "gate," but other supervisors and the clerks also had keys to the gate because their compartments were also behind the gate.

4. In August 1995, Petitioner complained to his postmaster about the vault set-up, specifically that other people had access to the area where his main stock was stored. (Rapoport Petition, December 13, 1996; statement of Lynda Buss, December 14, 1996).

5. The $4,500.00 of stock was lost on July 2, 1996 when, after starting to prepare stock for distribution to clerks, Petitioner left stock on the table in the vault while he was out of the vault to attend to other duties, or possibly to use the restroom.

6. Petitioner was issued a Letter of Demand for $4,500.00 on August 12, 1996 by Lynn Martin, Supervisor, Accounting Services, Van Nuys (California) District. On August 30, 1996, Lynda Buss, as Acting Postmaster, submitted a "Claim for Loss," asking that Mr. Rapoport not be held liable for this loss. She stated that the safe used by the clerks was being moved outside the "gate" in the vault, so that other people would no longer have access to the area used by Mr. Rapoport.

The Claim for Loss was denied on November 21, 1996 by Virginia Tovar, Acting Manager, Post Office Operations, Van Nuys District.

Contentions of the Parties

Petitioner argues that it takes four to five hours to prepare stock for distribution to the clerks, and that it is impossible for a supervisor to have that much uninterrupted time, either because he is called away for other duties, or because he needs to use the restroom. Because the size of the safes does not permit returning the stock to the safes in a manner that would preserve the separated allocations, it would undo work he had already done if he locked the stock up each time he left the vault. The only practical approach, he argues, is to leave the stock on the table. He argues that his position is vindicated by the fact that the "gate" was moved after this incident, just as he argued it should have been all along.

Respondent argues that Petitioner was told never to leave the vault while his stock was unsecured (see Bell affidavit), and that his continuing concern over others having access to the area helps to prove that he knew the risk of leaving the stock out. According to Respondent, his choosing to do so, in order to save time, constitutes lack of reasonable care.

DECISION

The standard for determining liability of Postal Service employees in matters such as this is contained in Handbook F-1, Post Office Accounting Procedures, Section 130 - Liability.¹  Subsection 131 applies to postmasters, and subsection 132 to other employees:

132 Other Employees

The postmaster consigns postal funds and accountable paper to other employees. Employees are held strictly accountable for any loss unless evidence establishes they exercised reasonable care in the performance of their duties.

There is no question that a loss occurred from the stock for which Petitioner was accountable. He discovered the loss and reported it. The only issue is whether the circumstances described by Petitioner should relieve him of liability for that loss, based on a finding that he exercised reasonable care under those circumstances. The evidence presented does not support a finding that Petitioner exercised reasonable care. He knew that he was responsible for maintaining the security of his stock, and he knew there was some risk in leaving it unattended, even though it was still within the vault. This is especially true after he had complained about the arrangement within the vault and had been told by his postmaster not to leave the vault while the stock was out of the safe. Even if the less-than-ideal set-up of the vault was later improved by moving the clerks’ safe, this does not excuse his failure to follow rules of security. If having to leave the vault forced Petitioner to make a choice between "wasting time" by re-securing the stock, or taking a chance that it would all be there when he returned, he made the wrong choice. Knowingly leaving the stock unsecured and unattended constitutes lack of reasonable care.

The Petition is denied. Respondent may collect $4,500.00 by offset from Petitioner’s salary.

Bruce R. Houston
Chief Administrative Law Judge

¹ The same standards are found in the Financial Management Manual (FMM), Sections 341 and 842.