Story highlights Inspector general report looks at compensation for transportation security criminal investigators

Finds that they conduct non-criminal investigations, leading to wasteful compensation

Practice could cost taxpayers $17.5 million or more over the next five years

Transportation Security Administration's criminal investigators frequently perform jobs that could be done by lower-paid employees, wasting millions of dollars a year, according to a report by an internal watchdog.

"Using criminal investigators to conduct noncriminal investigations is not an efficient use of resources," the Homeland Security Department Inspector General's Office said.

Left unchanged, the practice could cost taxpayers $17.5 million or more over the next five years, IG's audit said.

But the TSA disputed the finding, saying the employees are assigned and paid appropriately. And it disputed the contention that lower-level employees could perform the same work.

At issue is the TSA's Office of Inspection, which investigates employee misconduct, conducts covert tests at airport security checkpoints, and inspects other aviation security programs.

The office has about 124 criminal investigators. Under federal law and regulation, criminal investigators are law enforcement officers and must spend at least half of their time, on average, conducting investigations.

The job comes with bigger salaries and extra compensation for work weeks that often exceed 40 hours and require them to be available at all hours.

With the extra benefit -- called Law Enforcement Availability Pay -- the typical criminal investigator earns about $161,794, the audit said. But much of that work could be performed by transportation security specialists, who have a median pay of $117,775, the IG said.

While the lower-paid employees would be entitled to overtime pay, that would be "significantly less" than the extra compensation that criminal investigators earn.

If it was structured efficiently, the TSA's Office of Inspections would save up to $17.5 million in

LEAP savings over the next five years, the IG said.

Additional savings could be realized in training, travel, supplies and retirement benefits, the IG said.

"Rather than investigating criminal cases, the majority of the criminal investigators' workload consisted of noncriminal cases; monitoring and reporting on criminal cases; and carrying out inspections, covert testing, and internal reviews," the report says.

The TSA disagreed with the findings that it did not use its investigators efficiently.

"The number of cases opened and closed does not reflect the amount of time dedicated to an individual case," TSA Deputy Administrator John Halinski wrote in a letter to the Inspector General. And the inspector general should not infer that a case that resulted in administrative action did not begin as a criminal investigation.

The TSA is scheduling a workforce analysis project to review criminal investigator positions, and will examine the need for criminal investigator positions and compare it to the current staff, he said.