Several areas added to federal per diem program

The General Services Administration announced new per diem rates Tuesday for several areas in Montana, New York, Ohio and Texas.

The new per diem rates for business travel by federal employees were published Tuesday in the Federal Register and become effective on May 5, 2004. All but one of the areas, Killeen, Texas, are additions to the per diem program. The new rates and areas are:

• Montana:
  
• Butte, including Silver Bow County: $94
  
• Missoula, including Missoula County: $91
  
• Polson/Kalispell, including Lake and Flathead Counties: $90 to $118, depending on the dates of travel

  New York:
  

• Schenectady, including Schenectady County: $105

  Ohio:
  

• Fairborn, including City limits of Fairborn: $107

  Texas:
  

• Killeen, including Bell County: $97, up from $94.

More than 93,000 federal employees travel each day to more than 8,000 destinations, and in fiscal 2002, the last data available, agencies spent more than $10 billion on travel costs.

Last April, the per diem rate tables were removed from the Federal Travel Regulation. Now, the General Services Administration publishes rates periodically and posts them on its Web site at http://www.gsa.gov/perdiem.