Comment from Anonymous

Comment on Proposed Rule "Administrative Leave for Workforce Realignment and Other Purposes" Docket ID: OPM-2026-0397; RIN 3206-AP07; 91 FR 39032 I write as a private citizen to oppose this proposed rule in its entirety, and to urge OPM to withdraw the provisions at proposed 5 CFR 630.1403(c)(8), 630.1403(b)(5), and 715.202(b) in particular. What OPM characterizes as a modest codification of existing policy is in fact the retroactive legitimization of the 2025 Governmentwide deferred resignation program (DRP), an initiative whose costs and consequences OPM has now had more than a year to observe and which it declines to honestly account for anywhere in this proposal. On the deferred resignation program itself, the rule's own Regulatory Impact Analysis is not credible. OPM asserts under sections C and D that the rule will produce no significant change in usage and no measurable costs because it merely gives regulatory standing to policies already in force. This reasoning conflates the administrative act of codification with the substantive policy being codified. The deferred resignation program placed tens of thousands of employees in paid nonduty status for months while delivering no work to the public, a direct payroll expenditure for zero output, compounded by the loss of institutional knowledge, the collapse of continuity in mission-critical functions, and the documented degradation of agency capacity that followed. To describe the fiscal effect of blessing that model as de minimis is to ignore the very experience the Statement of Need claims to draw upon. If OPM possesses data on the program's actual costs and workforce effects, it should place that data in the docket; if it does not, it has no basis for its no-cost certification. More fundamentally, deferred resignation programs are unnecessary because Congress already built the tools for voluntary workforce reduction. The Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) exist precisely to let agencies reshape their workforces in an orderly, bounded, and accountable way, with statutory caps, defined eligibility, and clear cost ceilings. VERA and VSIP carry guardrails that deferred resignation deliberately discards. OPM's proposal lists all three side by side in 630.1403(c)(8) as if interchangeable, but they are not: the incentive authorities were designed with limits, and the deferred resignation model was designed to escape them. Codifying open-ended administrative leave as a "transition-to-separation tool" invites agencies to route around the disciplined mechanisms Congress enacted, and to do so with public funds and no meaningful oversight. I also object to the revision of 5 CFR 715.202(b), which would authorize agencies to deny an employee's request to withdraw a resignation on the sole ground that the employee accepted benefits under a deferred resignation agreement. Longstanding practice permitted withdrawal before the effective date absent a concrete agency reason such as a committed replacement hire or genuine administrative disruption. Recharacterizing the receipt of leave benefits, benefits the employee did not design and often accepted under duress and compressed deadlines, as itself a valid reason to trap that employee in a separation they now regret inverts the protective purpose of the rule. Resignation should remain a decision an employee can reconsider until it takes effect, and OPM offers no principled justification for foreclosing that reconsideration here. Finally, I strongly oppose proposed 630.1403(b)(5), which for the first time flatly prohibits the use of administrative leave for service as a poll worker or poll observer. This provision has nothing to do with workforce realignment and everything to do with narrowing civic participation. American elections depend on ordinary citizens staffing polling places, and federal employees, who are disproportionately trained, reliable, and available for exactly this kind of civic service, have long been a natural pool for it. Barring administrative leave for poll work does not save any meaningful sum; it simply raises the personal cost of sustaining the machinery of democracy. At a moment when jurisdictions across the country report poll worker shortages, the federal government should be encouraging this service, not erecting a regulatory obstacle to it. This prohibition should be struck. For these reasons I urge OPM to withdraw the proposed rule. The tools for responsible, voluntary workforce reduction already exist in statute, the deferred resignation model has proven costly and damaging rather than efficient, and the collateral provisions on resignation withdrawal and poll worker leave undermine both individual fairness and civic participation without any offsetting public benefit.