Ah ok, I use to travel all the time and contractors were most of my labor pool.
In the case I mentioned above I wanted to ride their bus because I had never been on travel before and had no clue what to do. It also pissed them off because they had to go everywhere together and here was this kid with the freedom to do whatever he wanted over those two weeks.
Like everything else the Government is involved in, it's a lot more complicated and nuanced than it first appears. On top of that, like anything written in stone and brought down from the mountain, ask 10 different Governement employees any question about any edict, and you'll get 13 different answers. At least.
It can provide the appearance of a "gift" from the contractor to the government employee for the contractor to offer transportation. Even when not in an official capacity, such as to or from a meeting, site inspection, or whatever. Say, going to lunch when the meeting breaks up for that purpose.
The rule of thumb I always heard was "government employees may ride with contractors (on reimbursable contracts), but contractors may not ride with government workers on same."
Like I said, 13 different answers.
The government is reimbursing the contractor for transportation. It saves the government money from having to also pay the GS back for separate transportation. If the GS is driving, and the contractor is along for the ride, that's misappropriation because they're riding for free AND getting reimbursed for travel.
Even if they're not claiming it - and, by and large, I've found contractors to be straight-forward and scrupulous about such things - as OC keeps harping, it's the optics of the thing.
I've been told that even meetings out in town where services contractors are going to a facility that's been rented from a (presumably) 3rd party contractor (not involved in the program's business), that could be one of those optics things. Which is BS, because I'm not getting reimbursed by the government for travel, and neither is my contractor buddy I'm driving or riding with.
Related: I've seen the Gov't do things that cost the Gov't (taxpayers) MORE money, because of their interpretation of regulations. I went round-and-round with the Navy travel officer, who argued that what I was trying to do with my travel plans violated the JTR. Her mistake was sending me what she thought was the relevant passage from the JTR. I looked through it, and read around it, and it said no such thing. I went over her head (which I would have never dreamed of doing while I was in uniform), and her commander (O-5) told the lieutenant (O-3) to calm down. Er, stand down. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.
I had sent him the spreadsheet showing where what she wanted to deny would have cost the Government almost half again as much money. The same spreadsheet I had sent her.
Lieutenants - can't live with them, and fragging them will get you brig time. Or stockade time.
