affirming the decision of the administrative law judge below our position on this is that ms fowler followed the express terms of a policy dealing with reimbursement of expenses incurred in a duty assignment intel i'll her normal assignment was to post sir post office and off the loose aisle the towns are about twenty miles apart and the father was provided that a sign and i you saying that under just the regular travel rules given that she was placed in this position which is still within the fifty mile radius of her duty station that g is automatically entitled to travel with her d m there regularly the particular policy says within fifty if it has to be outside of thirty miles from outside of fifty miles regular travel or if it requires an overnight stay and who gets to determine what requiring an overnight stay when the circumstances exist well by the rules as they're written the approving official official who's authorized to approve travel expenses which person to make see as it's defined we believe ms fall or follow the assigned where this the technical aspects or break of this station and the other point under your interpretation when it that mean that any supervisor with travel approval authority could approve her travel not necessarily what is what matters is whether or not that individual has the authority there is a logical reason was what i just asked the person has trouble authorisation your theory is she could go to anybody i believe that who she went to can go to somebody in california that had traveled authorization and say please approve my travel if the as we  the policy as the postal service wrote the policy technically you could do that yes well how could that possibly rewrite this we talked earlier this isn't necessarily normal or automatic that you get regular travel in the circumstances has to decide that it's a necessary prerequisite for that you have to be there overnight well if you don't want supervising this employee with regard to her tasks with her responsibilities how can you possibly be in a position to make that determination saying that overnight stay would be required the sister denied it so what we're left with is what is the policies in the policy talks about in approving official what the post the article says is that you have to prove before him right use prepare and submit the paperwork and have the trip approved before you were scheduled to depart was that done in the circumstance actually i believe the policy the ten eleven that they're talking about is for non bargaining  all assignments in writing but in the approval is based on a set of factors where we're you always weary i'm sorry i'm on a seven five four i i believe that the regulations are in there twice this is from the  from the agency that i was as a nation to dash two point one point but where were the issue when the regulations comes down to when does this become extended duty and when is it a temporary sign well it's a i don't understand i what i was this pre approval and as i'm looking at the right thing travel authorization that would be one of the factors yes and but what this what this what this folly testified is that it was mrs susan who was looking for an individual to fill the power vacancy this fall or was recommended but father expressed concerns that she had the mr in the house about the cost and expense of doing this assignment now she would have taken the assignment with her without the will if he was the one so she testified the office it isn't the potential evidence to suggest that she never said what i'm arguing is the credibility issues be what they are the policy says what the policy step the post office politics using people that have the us already in theory to approve travel with the actual approval on a day to day basis of people supervisors i'm relying on the policies that the post office has enunciated and what they who read i mean there's no doubt that his father knew that she had to get stuff approved by or supervisor because the government points to lots of different requests that she did get approved by this to start pronouncing the name right correct why didn't she asked for her travel to be approved by her as well as the as the record shows she made an initial effort perhaps she should have made a more complete effort but will clearly she wasn't happening a problem getting approvals from her supervisor because she did that for other things she just didn't do it for travel because she was she was told by mr engel how to go ahead and submit travels to missions to him he did say was unauthorized to prove her credibility like credibility determinations were made specifically that it was not credible that she really couldn't get a hold of her supervisor for purposes of these travel reimbursement so she may have sad i tried and and couldn't get ahold of my supervisor but the administrators judge found that not to be credible in the board adopted that credibility determination that's correct but what i'm saying and what we're arguing is this that the policy matters what the policy is what it says th only one who doesn't appreciate that it was your supervisor because it seems like all of the other players did it she says she tried to get her supervisor to approve it but her supervisor was too busy so it's some level she understood this was the go to person you tell us that mr  nah i think you should do it but you told us earlier that you said i talked to your supervisor and she said i could so it seems like whether there's ambiguity in the house they're not everybody involved in this process understood that the supervisor her since there as well mr starr's got monthly reports of these expenses the the government does or the agency doesn't contend that the amount allocated is improper only that   between men since no r n and her original supervisor but the rules are what they are and if she's not entitle them to anything other than local expansive than the rules say that the employee responsible for only asking for allowable expenses so couldn't that be the end of the increase she asked for expenses that were not allowed well regardless of who she asked we believe the policies entitled her to regular travel or what she was doing on that assignment was regular travel as the pollen as a post office says most travel is we believe that she was in the title says she was entitled to stay overnight in the first instance and you're usually not entitled to say overnight when that he had talked to the susan who said that that was the case that's not credible though i mean the board rejected all of that your argument version of the fact that the board didn't file and were not reviewing to know about your version of the facts for reviewing what the board that job as an oh i see which another definition for regular travel is how long these assignments last this assignment had lasted five months and was had no ending to it it was indefinite an indefinite assignment as in oh i away i mean that's like from here to dulles airport i mean people commute part of it every day to d c the but the base is the basis of how but it is that again the transfer to transformation from a supports the determination that she claimed and received more than thirteen thousand dollars let me ask you just some of last point that your friend raised under the rules is there a some sort of  understanding of this of this matter is that because it was a detail the proper interpretation of what traveling title maci had is done with reference to whether the travel claimed falls under the local travel functional grounds there's the issue of whether she's entitled to the expense and then there's the issue of who she should move it to is there anything in writing that requires people to get to travel prove whether immediate  approve or is designated for its travels where with the designation for her absolutely it talks about the specified approving fishel it doesn't say any approving special rights of that where is the specification the specification it comes from the context of the entire and it for sure it does not say her immediate supervisor that's true it does not write it and send the jar he testified that she had approved expenses from outside her chain of command  she had under circumstances that didn't exist in this context that there was a general rule about who approves agency travel was was testified by many different witnesses and the role that has emerged is that your immediate supervisor getting back to my question there's nothing in writing about this there's nothing in writing saying that says you have to go to your immediate supervisor everybody understand that you get a trial the requests approved by your supervisor that's the toughest mon correct in your honor i do not mean to interrupt you just when we go there is nothing in writing saying immediate supervisor but what there is is specified approving fishel there's a language says an approving official is designated it doesn't say any perhaps there was nothing in the record saying that there was a written designation however a supervisor was definitely definitely and that's because of the ample record testimony and definitely substantial evidence that the postal service is a very chain of command type organization there is is their testimony suggesting that you know there during orientation or training or the like that trouble requests go to your supervisor i'm not aware who was in that but it is in the manual it says in here that typically your immediate supervisor notifies you that upcoming trip and then proceed suck about how you have to get approval ahead of time and those sorts of things and my friend has not articulated a basis for saying that that does not apply moreover the even if it was not written we do have ample testimony saying this is a chain of command situation we knew the approving official for carthage detail for instance wasn't the person of the same rank as  did not conclude in the brief i can't give you better than answer that i do apologize for the delay in raising it but the factual basis of that had been in the record the entire time because of all the testimony by witness after witness saying yes this is the policy and even if we did raise it late and i do apologize again for that it is still the law and there is evidence showing that there is this policy exists and even if the court were vouchers was that she tried to submit it to such an er and that shows us that she knew about this policy now she of course later changed her explain and said all i tried to didn't work when she said i couldn't find her name the system or she said that my travel budget was getting stale even though to leave in about nine days since the travel had started so all of that is substantial evidence so getting back to the first of the two the two basic charges that were against are fundamentally  and as for the other charge about something into the wrong person there's ample record as in supporting that as well the fact that she had submitted to the same level of supervisor back in carthage is just one example of the evidence  that and so once we get to the fact that there's substantial evidence supporting all of the rule charges then the courts evaluation is was the rule within the discretion of the agency and here the agency held to a higher level of responsibility and look at the fact that she did not accept responsibility for her misconduct which again consisted of her submitting vulture's not to a manager but rather to somebody who  lateral with her a centrally another post office or post inspector postmaster college in another office but certainly not one of the managers to me she's been operating within a daily basis for instance the minute left to read thank you the one aspect that i didn't get addressed in my all my opening ports from was the nature of the penalty imposed on an employee that had no prior disciplinary record had been with the postal service for sixteen years for violating a policy that she follows a literal terms of and the agency is arguing that she didn't follow what they believe they need this an individual who the reason and so they made the determination that that employee should be terminated for follow up not following the proper procedure on expense falters and self in richmond the self enrichment by tower she sells enriching herself they were married the the implicit belief without proof that they were having a relationship which they both deny played a substantial role in this discharge