Pentagon quick on plans to cut troops, slower on civilian trims
By Leo Shane III, Staff writer 10:59 a.m. EST December 28, 2015
Civilian firefighters.
Defense Department leaders are lagging behind on mandates to find tens of millions of dollars in savings from cutting the civilian workforce and outside contractors, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.
It has been three years since lawmakers ordered Pentagon planners to find savings in both personnel areas in the wake of announced plans to cut military active-duty end strength as a long-term cost saving measure. The 2013 Defense Authorization Act mandates that planners reduce civilian workers and outside contract spending at roughly the same rate as troop cutbacks.
But the GAO report said defense officials have been slow to outline those plans so far.
“While DoD developed a plan for reductions in the civilian workforce, it did not provide details to understand how these reductions would be achieved or any information demonstrating that the goals were being achieved,” the report said. “As a result … Congress does not have information on how the department will achieve required savings.”
The report notes that DoD has trimmed about 3.3 percent of its full-time civilian employees since the start of fiscal 2012, but that translates into less than a 1 percent reduction in civilian personnel costs.
Meanwhile, military end strength has declined by about 6 percent over the same period, and military personnel costs have dropped by about 8 percent, according to the report.
GAO officials found that trims in defense contractors two years ago had military officials on a path toward more equivalent savings, but fiscal 2016 spending plans bumped up those costs again. As a result, the report said department contractor spending will be about $2 billion more than the target goals outlined by Congress.
“At a time when the entire federal government is facing fiscal challenges that are likely to continue, DoD must plan strategically for reductions to its civilian and contractor workforces to achieve savings,” the report said.
Pentagon officials responded to the report by agreeing that changes need to be made, but they insisted some cost-saving measures already are underway and blamed delays in accounting on differences in long-term military budget planning and the congressional mandates for the civilian and contractor workforces.
DoD employed about 222,000 full-time civilian workers and spent nearly $52 billion on outside contractors in fiscal 2015, according to military officials.
Overall military end strength topped 2.1 million, but lawmakers have warned that trimming those numbers too deeply could affect readiness and may be difficult to replace quickly in a time of war.
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/12/28/gao-report-civilian-contractor-cuts/77968384/
