FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas – A diversion of dollars to help fight the war in Iraq has helped create a $530 million shortfall for Army posts at home and abroad, leaving some unable to pay utility bills or even cut the grass.
In San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston hasn’t been able to pay its $1.4 million monthly utility bill since March, prompting workers in many of the post’s administrative buildings to get automated disconnection notices.
Fort Bragg in North Carolina can’t afford to buy pens, paper or other office supplies until the new fiscal year starts in October.
And in Kentucky, Fort Knox had to close one of its eight dining halls for a month and lay off 133 contract workers.
“Every time something goes away it impacts a person … a soldier or their family or one of our civilians,” said Col. Wendy Martinson, garrison commander at Fort Sam Houston, which has 27,300 military and civilian workers. “I’m charged with taking care of them, not taking things away from them.”
Garrisons function as the city halls of Army installations, providing services such as garbage removal, mail delivery and firefighting. The Army’s Installation Management Agency is $530 million short of what it needs through Oct. 1 to fund garrisons at the 117 installations it oversees in the United States, Europe and Asia, agency spokesman Stephen Oertwig said.
The skyrocketing cost of fuel is partly to blame, and it is costing more to pay civilians in Asia and Europe, Oertwig said. Another major factor is the practice of funding the war through spending bills outside the annual budget.
As Congress spent months debating the supplemental spending bill, the Army had to divert money from the Installation Management Agency’s budget to cover the cost of the war, Oertwig said.
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