I know that in some cases with my own constituents who work for the federal government, one of the things we've heard sometimes is, “Oh well, we demanded a lump sum back because the employee wasn't in touch with us in order to talk about a repayment plan.”
In my view, given everything that has happened around Phoenix, if the federal government sees that an extraordinary sum of money is owed by an employee, whether it's $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000, it seems to me wrong as a starting point to think that an employee could afford to absorb the maximum amount of that off their paycheck and that they could just get through a few pay periods without any money.
Can you commit to having the department proactively contact people who owe money in order to establish a payment plan instead of putting the onus on the employee, who may not even know that they owe the money before it shows up on their pay stub?