Pentagon Travel Expense Cuts Are Hurting Navy Ship Maintenance

A bipartisan movement involving lawmakers, a high-ranking Defense official, labor, and business leaders to repeal a 2014 Pentagon policy that cut per diem rates for long-term government travel is gaining momentum.

Rep. Mark Takai, D-Hawaii, currently is asking his colleagues to sign onto a letter to the leadership of the Defense appropriations panel asking appropriators to eliminate the policy, which reduced the reimbursement rates by 25 percent for long-term TDY of 31 to 180 days, and by 45 percent for travel exceeding 180 days. The policy affects Defense civilian workers and service members.

“The per diem policy has damaged the morale of employees and also negatively affected many businesses that cater to government and military personnel,” said the draft letter from Takai. “While we all applaud the Department of Defense for working to find initiatives for cost savings and creating efficiencies, we must do our best to ensure that any solutions resulting from this do not negatively affect the personnel or readiness of our national defense sector.” 

Takai noted that the repeal movement has broad and diverse support from lawmakers, and also unions and industry. Some of the supporters include the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Marriott International, and Hilton Worldwide.

IFPTE, among others, is trying to get a provision reversing the policy inserted into the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., has introduced a standalone bill (H.R. 1193), still pending, that would reverse the per diem reductions imposed by the Defense policy. The bill has 33 co-sponsors – 25 Democrats and eight Republicans.

On the Senate side, a group of bipartisan senators with shipyards in their states, in early February urged Defense Secretary Ash Carter to exempt naval shipyard employees from the 2014 policy.

“Predictably, DoD’s approach is negatively affecting our shipyard workers, who often conduct long-term TDY assignments to maintain our nation’s naval fleet,” said the Feb. 5 letter from seven senators. “We are concerned that this new policy may reduce the number of shipyard workers who are willing to volunteer to perform long-term TDY travel, which poses a serious risk to mission readiness. In addition, we owe our dedicated shipyard workers, who make great sacrifices on our behalf, the assurance that they will not be responsible for expenses that should be paid by the government.”

The senators’ letter references a Jan. 19 letter from the head of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) asking Defense for an immediate waiver for shipyard workers from the new reduced reimbursement rates. “This is jeopardizing the successful execution of off-station availabilities and costing the Navy more than the intended savings,” wrote Adm. William Hilarides to Anthony Kurta, the per diem, travel, and transportation allowance committee charter chair. “Reduced travel allowances have introduced inefficiencies and hardships for shipyard workers on long-term TDY.”

Hilarides cited several factors related to the reduced per diems for long-term TDY that could adversely affect the command’s mission, including “undesirable” turnover among staff because various bargaining unit agreements restrict the amount of forced travel the agency can impose on workers, and difficulty in finding adequate housing. The policy, Hilarides said, “has already had a negative impact on the naval shipyards’ ability to effectively and efficiently conduct Navy ship maintenance.”

The commander also said the policy could drive a wedge between leaders and the rank-and-file, hurting morale and performance. “The appearance of disparate treatment can also occur when leadership, whose travel routinely takes them to required meetings, for less than 30 days, are provided 100 percent of the M&IE,” Hilarides wrote. “At the same time, the wage grade ship maintenance workforce is required to travel for 90-180+ days and is thus restricted to 75 percent or 55 percent of M&IE.”

Under the policy, for long-term TDY of 31 to 180 days, the reimbursement rate is up to 75 percent of the locality rate (lodging plus meals and incidentals) for each full day during long-term TDY of 31 to 180 days; for travel lasting more than 180 days, it falls to 55 percent of the locality rate for each full day.

Congress and the Obama administration have told agencies they need to cut travel costs. Still, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as several unions, believe the Pentagon’s changes have eroded morale and caused an undue burden on government travelers. The 2014 policy is simply unrealistic, given the increased rates of rental housing and many hotels, they have argued. 

Defense did not comment on the matter beyond saying it had received the senators’ Feb. 5 letter and would respond directly to them.

In the fall of 2015, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii unsuccessfully tried to get appropriators to include language in the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill that would have repealed the cuts to the long-term TDY per diems. A congressionally-mandated study on the policy’s ramifications on employees is due on June 1.

Matt Biggs, IFPTE legislative and political director, said the organization is seeing “more interest” in getting the policy repealed from various groups, and from Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers. The issue “will see more legislative action this year,” Biggs predicted.