OPM Special Authorities
Title 5 Chapter 13 is a catch-all chapter for a set of special authorities connected to the Office of Personnel Management and the older civil-service machinery that OPM inherited from the Civil Service Commission. 5 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1307 covers competitive-service rules, OPM regulations for examinations and veterans' preference, investigations and reports by OPM/MSPB/OSC, loyalty-investigation responsibilities, the OPM revolving fund, special authority involving administrative law judges, and a few residual procedural powers like administering oaths.
This chapter does not read like a modern, unified program statute. It is more like a bundle of institutional tools. Read together, though, the sections tell a coherent story: OPM is not only a policy agency and HR manager. It also retains legacy regulatory, investigative, financing, and adjudicatory-support powers that help keep the federal personnel system running.
Current Law (2026)
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Governing law | 5 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1307 |
| Main focus | OPM special rulemaking, investigative, financing, and procedural authorities tied to the federal personnel system |
| Competitive-service role | OPM helps the President prepare competitive-service rules and prescribes regulations for competitive examinations (§§1301-1302) |
| Veterans' preference role | OPM prescribes and enforces regulations implementing preference-eligible rights in both the competitive and excepted service (§1302(b)-(c)) |
| Investigative authority | OPM, MSPB, and OSC may investigate and report on matters concerning competitive-service rules and examining administration (§1303) |
| Loyalty/background function | OPM conducts certain statutory loyalty investigations, with FBI referral or substitution in specified cases (§1304) |
| Revolving fund | OPM maintains a revolving fund for investigations, training, reimbursable personnel-management services, and related oversight (§1304(e)) |
| ALJ authority | OPM and MSPB have special investigative and regulatory authority relating to administrative law judges (§1305) |
| Why it matters | Chapter 13 preserves the institutional plumbing behind competitive-service administration, veterans' preference, investigations, and OPM's reimbursable operations |
Legal Authority
- 5 U.S.C. § 1301 — Rules: OPM assists the President in preparing rules for administration of the competitive service
- 5 U.S.C. § 1302 — Regulations: OPM regulates competitive examinations and administers veterans' preference rules in the competitive and excepted service
- 5 U.S.C. § 1303 — Investigations; reports: OPM, MSPB, and OSC may investigate and report on enforcement and administration of competitive-service rules and examination activities
- 5 U.S.C. § 1304 — Loyalty investigations; reports; revolving fund: assigns specified loyalty-investigation functions to OPM, provides for FBI involvement in some cases, and establishes OPM's revolving fund
- 5 U.S.C. § 1305 — Administrative law judges: gives OPM and MSPB certain investigative, regulatory, and advisory powers involving ALJ-related provisions
- 5 U.S.C. § 1306 — Oaths to witnesses: authorizes the OPM Director and representatives to administer oaths in matters pending before OPM
- 5 U.S.C. § 1307 — Minutes: requires minutes of proceedings to be kept, a surviving legacy provision from the Civil Service Commission era
What Connects These Sections
They are institutional support authorities. Chapter 13 is less about employee entitlements and more about the tools needed to administer the system around them.
They preserve older civil-service architecture. Some sections feel historical because they are. They preserve powers that originated in the Civil Service Commission and were carried forward into OPM, MSPB, and OSC.
They mix modern and legacy functions. Competitive-service regulation and veterans' preference oversight remain very current; loyalty-investigation language and minutes-of-proceedings language show the chapter's older lineage.
Major Components
Competitive-service rules and examination regulation
5 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1302(a) makes clear that OPM still sits close to the core of competitive-service administration. OPM helps the President prepare the rules governing the competitive service, and OPM itself prescribes regulations for examinations and preserves the records of those examinations.
These sections matter because they are part of the legal foundation for the federal competitive hiring system. Even when agencies operate with delegated examining authority, the deeper rulemaking and structural authority still traces back to OPM's government-wide role.
Veterans' preference administration
5 U.S.C. § 1302(b)-(c) gives OPM a specific regulatory role in implementing Congress's policy that preference eligibles receive preference in certification, appointment, reinstatement, reemployment, and retention in both the competitive service and the excepted service.
That is important because veterans' preference is not self-executing. It requires a government-wide regulator to write and enforce the operational rules. This section is one reason OPM sits at the center of how agencies translate veterans' preference from statute into actual hiring and retention practice -- veterans' preference also plays a critical role in the order-of-retention rules during reductions in force.
Investigations, reports, and loyalty inquiries
5 U.S.C. § 1303 gives OPM, MSPB, and OSC investigative and reporting authority over matters involving competitive-service rules and the conduct of examiners and other personnel involved in executing the competitive-service provisions of Title 5. It is a small section, but it reinforces that civil-service administration has always included oversight and inspection functions, not just policy issuance.
5 U.S.C. § 1304 is more unusual and more historical in flavor. It assigns OPM responsibility for certain statutory loyalty investigations, requires referral to the FBI if the loyalty of an investigated individual becomes questionable, and allows the President or the Secretary of State to shift certain investigations directly to the FBI when national interests or sensitive positions require it. The section also explicitly preserves the FBI's separate responsibility for espionage, sabotage, and subversive-act investigations.
This provision is a reminder that the federal personnel-security system long predates today's modern clearance structure and was once organized around loyalty-investigation statutes now mostly seen as legacy infrastructure. See Enhanced Personnel Security Programs for the modern framework.
OPM's revolving fund and reimbursable services
One of the most practically important sections here is 5 U.S.C. § 1304(e), which establishes OPM's revolving fund. The fund finances investigations, training, and other functions OPM performs on a reimbursable basis, including personnel-management services performed for agencies and oversight activities tied to those functions.
This matters because OPM is not funded only through ordinary direct appropriations. The revolving-fund structure supports the business-like side of OPM's operations, where agencies reimburse OPM for services and OPM is expected to account for those functions on something like an actual-cost basis over time.
Administrative law judge support powers
5 U.S.C. § 1305 gives OPM and MSPB special powers relating to administrative law judges, including investigation, regulation, advisory committees, legislative recommendations, subpoenas, and witness fees for purposes of several ALJ-related provisions elsewhere in Title 5.
This section shows how Chapter 13 often works: instead of laying out a whole substantive ALJ regime, it grants supporting powers that allow OPM and MSPB to operate and refine the system. It is one of the statutory links between OPM's broader personnel role and the unique status of ALJs as protected federal adjudicators.
How It Works
Chapter 13 combines rulemaking, oversight, and service-delivery functions in the same statutory cluster. OPM's authority over competitive-service examinations and veterans' preference administration under §§ 1301-1302 is the rulemaking foundation — even when agencies operate with delegated examining authority, the underlying structural authority traces back to OPM. The investigative and loyalty-inquiry provisions in §§ 1303-1304 are legacy infrastructure from an earlier era of civil service law, but they still anchor OPM and OSC inspection functions. The revolving fund in § 1304(e) makes OPM partly self-financing through reimbursable services to agencies, and § 1305's ALJ support powers link OPM's personnel role to the protected status of federal administrative law judges. Many of this chapter's most important effects are structural: it empowers OPM, MSPB, and OSC to support or police other personnel regimes rather than spelling out individual rights directly.
How It Affects You
If you work in federal HR, staffing, or delegated examining: Chapter 13 defines OPM's oversight authority over your hiring operations. The § 1303 investigative power is the legal basis for OPM to audit agencies' use of delegated examining authority and require corrective action when agencies misuse it. In the 2025 DOGE environment, OPM used its oversight role selectively — approving some political-priority reclassifications while auditing other agency staffing decisions for merit-system compliance. If your agency received OPM feedback on competitive hiring actions, that feedback traces back to this investigative and oversight authority.
If you are a veteran or preference-eligible applicant navigating federal hiring: OPM's § 1302(b)-(c) authority makes veterans' preference a government-wide rule rather than an agency-by-agency policy. That matters most during reductions in force: veterans' preference affects the order of retention in RIFs (preference eligibles retain ahead of non-preference eligibles with equal performance ratings), and OPM's veterans' preference regulations — not individual agency HR interpretation — control how that order applies. During the DOGE-era RIFs of 2025, veterans' groups filed complaints alleging that some agencies applied RIF retention orders incorrectly and shortchanged veterans' preference rights. OPM's Chapter 13 investigative authority is the institutional mechanism for investigating and correcting those violations. If you believe your veterans' preference rights were not respected in a hiring or RIF action, file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel or MSPB — not the agency that acted against you.
If you are an administrative law judge or follow ALJ independence issues: Section 1305 gives OPM and MSPB special powers over ALJ-related regulations and investigations. ALJs are protected from at-will removal — they can be removed only for cause after MSPB proceedings — and OPM's Chapter 13 regulatory authority is part of the statutory infrastructure that maintains that protection. The Trump administration's interest in reclassifying ALJs into Schedule F (at-will status) would require overriding both this statute and the existing OPM regulations implementing it; litigation over any such reclassification would center on whether the § 1305 structure bars at-will removal without statutory amendment.
If you track OPM's budget and organizational capacity: The revolving fund (§ 1304(e)) finances OPM's reimbursable services — personnel-management support for agencies, training programs, and HR auditing services. When agencies reimburse OPM for staffing oversight, the funds flow through this revolving fund rather than OPM's direct appropriation. DOGE's review of OPM's budget in 2025 affected both sides of this equation: cutting OPM's own appropriated workforce while also reducing agency demand for reimbursable OPM services as agencies froze non-essential spending. Tracking the revolving fund balance and revenue is a leading indicator of whether OPM maintains the operational capacity to perform the oversight functions Chapter 13 assigns it.
State Variations
This chapter applies to the federal civil-service system. States have their own civil-service commissions, HR agencies, veterans' preference rules, and administrative-hearing systems, which vary substantially.
Implementing Regulations
Chapter 13 is implemented through a wide range of 5 C.F.R. regulations on competitive hiring, examinations, veterans' preference, OPM services, and ALJ-related matters rather than through a single stand-alone regulation devoted only to these sections.
Pending Legislation
No major standalone bill in the 119th Congress appears focused specifically on rewriting Chapter 13 as a whole. The live issues are usually pieces of it: veterans' preference administration, ALJ independence, reimbursable OPM services, and broader civil-service reform.
Recent Developments
The most current parts of this chapter are the ones tied to veterans' preference, competitive-service oversight, OPM's reimbursable operations, and administrative law judges. Debates over Schedule-policy/career changes, delegated hiring authority, ALJ independence, and workforce restructuring keep these background authorities relevant even when Chapter 13 itself is rarely discussed by name.
In that sense, Chapter 13 is a support chapter: it rarely drives headlines, but it helps explain how the civil-service system's rulemaking, oversight, and service infrastructure continues to function behind the scenes.