I have had it. The LOJ status is a headache for all parties involved and should be made unlawful. For those unaware, the LOJ status in your clearance file is like a scarlet letter. Here is how you get it:
- Bad - You have an incident (arrest, failed drug test, loan default, etc.) and then before your clearance investigation gets adjudicated (finished), you either withdraw from the process, or quit, or get terminated.
- Neutral - Your job loses the contract or cancels your position, so your clearance process stops.
However, some people leave a job on good terms, or they don’t accept a job after they are granted clearance eligibility, and they think all is well and they will have the magical two years of clearance eligibility. Only to find out they got LOJ’d. In each of these cases, the problem is you don’t have a sponsor (job) that requires the clearance so nobody bothers to fix the issue.
This is ridiculous. The government already spent all of this money on a person to clear them but won’t adjudicate them during LOJ because they are unsponsored. However, if you get a statement of reasons (SOR), you can answer and appeal it if you are unsponsored. This same policy for SORs should apply to LOJs.
There should be a mandate that ALL clearance processes, incident reports, etc. must get adjudicated, regardless of the person’s employment status. There are tons of cleared jobs out there that need candidates but they won’t bother with an uncleared or LOJ candidate because they don’t want to wait for the clearance process to complete. Well, the fully cleared candidates are all taken, employed, or may retire soon.
No more LOJs! Abolish LOJs! Adjudicate everyone, period!