Sequestration hits; local impact uncertain

WASHINGTON (AFPS) -- Defense Department civilian employees will "particularly" feel the pain sequester will bring to the entire defense workforce, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last Friday.

Those cuts could have a significant effect on Mountain Home and the Treasure Valley.

In his first Pentagon press briefing since becoming defense secretary early last week, Hagel outlined the steps the Pentagon and the services will take as the budget mechanism known as sequester, which took effect Saturday, trims roughly half a trillion dollars from defense spending over the next 10 years.

Along with major cost-cutting actions by the services to curtail training and maintenance, the department has already announced it will furlough civilian employees beginning in late April, cutting their work hours and pay by 20 percent for the rest of the fiscal year. That will amount to about 22 days and employees will not be allowed to use accumulated leave time to cover for the loss of those days.

Civilian DoD employees will get at least 30 days advance notice of any furloughs.

Requests last week by the Mountain Home News to Mountain Home Air Force Base and Air Combat Command to detail some of the impacts of sequestration on the local base and economy have gone unanswered so far.

The FY2011 economic analysis of the base, the latest public figures available, show 453 "general schedule and wage grade employees" among the "appropriated funds" class of civilians. In addition, 45 of those appropriated funds civilians worked for the Defense Commissary Agency and 401 were contract employees. Excluding the contractors, the economic analysis showed nearly $28.7 million in wages paid to those 498 civilians in FY2011. If those numbers are still accurate, a 20 percent cut would represent more than $5.7 million in lost wages, locally.

It's not immediately known how many of those people, and in what specific categories, will actually be affected. Only non-essential personnel will face furloughs. Those designated as essential personnel will not. As of Friday, the Air Force was still working through those designations for each base.

"Our number one concern is our people, military and civilian, the millions of men and women of this department who work very hard every day to ensure America's security," said Hagel.

"I know that these budget cuts will cause pain, particularly among our civilian workforce and their families. I'm also concerned, as we all are, about the impact on readiness that these cuts will have across our force."

Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter joined Hagel for Friday's conference and shared his views about defense civilian workers.

"As you know, our civilian workforce is about 800,000 strong," Carter said. "Those people, too, are dedicated to the defense mission." Nearly 90 percent of DOD civilians live outside of Washington, he noted, and nearly half of them are veterans.

"So they're dedicated to the mission, too," he said. "And as the year goes on, many of them will be subject to furlough."

Civilians make important contributions to the nation's defense, Carter said. "They do real things that are really important to us. And they've had their pay frozen for years. Now they're subject to furlough."

The deputy secretary said the reason civilians join the department, and the reason "I hope they'll stick with us," is because of the mission.

"They're committed to what we do, which is defend the country and hope to make a better world," he said. "That's why they do it."