Opinion ID: 406165
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unauthorized Issuance of Keys

Text: 16 Although petitioner frames his attack on the MSPB decision sustaining the charges against him as a challenge to the substantiality of the evidence, he nevertheless concedes the essential facts of the first and fourth charges. He admits that he gave keys to RMS to Lorenzo Leak, Joseph Lloyd and Clyde Burnett so that they might use the RMS swimming pool after hours. Petitioner claims, however, that he had been delegated carte blanche authority to issue keys to RMS and that no hospital regulations prohibited him from doing so. In support of the former claim, Gipson cites a May 20, 1976 memorandum written by Dr. Kamenetz, the Chief of RMS. The memorandum states: The responsibility for controlling keys and the authority to originate all key requests is hereby delegated to B.R. Gipson, Administrative Assistant, RMS. A.R. 12. 17 The MSPB correctly rejected these arguments. The MSPB could properly interpret the May 20, 1976 memorandum as giving Gipson less than unbridled discretion over the issuance of keys to RMS. Notably, the memorandum explicitly granted Gipson the responsibility for controlling keys as well as the authority to issue them. In addition, the record contains substantial evidence of security problems in and around RMS and indicates that RMS was re-keyed several times during Gipson's tenure at the hospital because persons outside RMS had obtained keys to the Service. A.R. 13; Tr. II 33. In these circumstances, it was plainly not irrational for the MSPB to conclude, as the Veterans Administration had charged, that Gipson's issuance of keys to persons outside the Service for their unsupervised, personal use of the RMS pool was an imprudent exercise of Gipson's responsibility and discretion. Gipson could therefore be subject to discipline, even though his actions may have violated no specific hospital regulation.