Have to give credit to the Washington Post for their coverage of federal workers who are getting, quite literally, money for nothing. And we’re not talking about small amounts here, either. Their investigative series deals with the little examined practice of government agencies putting personnel on paid leave for a variety of offenses, including when investigations into wrongdoing are taking place. That doesn’t sound all that unusual at first glance, but some of these paid leave periods stretch on for months or even years. And now the head of the Office of Personnel Management has called for it to stop.

In a memo last week, Office of Personnel Management director Katherine Archuleta told agency heads that the extensive use of administrative leave throughout government should be just the opposite: a “temporary solution,” only for problem employees who pose a danger to themselves or their colleagues.

In other words, if someone poses a threat to his own safety or the safety of others, send him home. If the situation could take a long time to resolve, like most misconduct cases, keep them on the job.

The new policy comes after The Washington Post reported that during a three-year period that ended last fall, more than 57,000 federal employees were sent home for a month or longer, some for longer stretches that hit a year or more. The tab for these workers reached more than $700 million in salary alone, according to data from the Government Accountability Office.

The numbers here are pretty shocking even if you assume that the federal government is chock full of waste, fraud and abuse. They’re discussing not only the 53,000 who were benched for up to three months, but also 4,000 who stayed home for three months to a year and hundreds more who were on paid leave for more than a year. And the GAO auditors are admitting that the data is “spotty” and the actual numbers are likely higher. That’s already against the rules, but apparently they aren’t very tightly enforced.

Some of the reasons given sound like pure satire.

GAO auditors found that supervisors used wide discretion in putting employees on leave, including for alleged violations of ­government rules and laws, whistleblowing, doubts about trust­worthiness, and disputes with colleagues or bosses. Some employees remain on paid leave while they challenge demotions and other punishments.

This may just be the result of not only a lack of disclosure and transparency about spending taxpayer dollars, but the old axiom about how it’s nearly impossible to fire a government worker once they are on the payroll. This phenomenon plays out in the teachers unions all the time. During the height of the rubber room scandals (which have still not gone away, just so you know) New York City alone had more than 700 teachers sitting around on paid leave for years on end. The reasons ranged from things as simple as a lack of a suitable assignment to child molesters who were awaiting trial. And they were all paid with money straight out of your wallets.

As for the situation with the federal workers, Chuck Grassley and Darrell Issa are looking into it.

Republicans in Congress, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) last fall asked 17 large federal agencies to account for hundreds of employees they have kept on paid leave for a year or more.

“We’re still analyzing the responses but what we’re seeing so far causes concern,” Grassley said in a statement Wednesday. “The responding agencies spent tens of millions of dollars in one year alone to put employees on administrative leave for one month or more, often when administrative leave wasn’t the most appropriate action to take. Agencies need to do a better job of protecting the taxpayers from abusively long or inappropriate paid leave.”

Good luck with that, gentlemen. Let’s hope you actually manage to get something done on this one.