Signs of the prolonged shutdown are cropping up at the largest Coast Guard base in the country.
There’s a hiring freeze on all but a few specific positions on Base Kodiak. The local Coast Guard Exchange has partially cut its store hours short. Websites are going unmanaged.
And the last time the base’s Facebook feed was updated was Feb. 26. It says, “Due to the lapse in federal funding, information on this social media site will not be actively managed,” over an image with the base’s motto, “ROCK SOLID SUPPORT.”
In an email, a Coast Guard Arctic District headquarters spokesperson said, “The longer the shutdown lasts, the more difficult it will become for the Coast Guard to maintain mission readiness.”
“Every day this shutdown drags on moves us closer to a tipping point," Admiral Thomas Allan said. "And we know through experience that it will take us about two-and-a-half days to recover for every day we are in a shutdown.”
Allan, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, testified to Congress last month about the shutdown's impacts on the agency during a House Homeland Security Committee meeting on March 25. He said that for nearly half of this fiscal year, more than 85 days, the Coast Guard has been without the necessary funding to pay its people and operate. And during the shutdown, the service has also incurred more than $200 million in unpaid bills to its industry partners.
For now, the Coast Guard’s focus is on essential missions like search and rescue, maritime safety and security, and environmental response.
Chris Burke is an inventory specialist for the Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak’s Aviation Material Office. It’s a civilian job, but one the Coast Guard says supports essential functions and that Burke has to keep showing up for – even when it doesn’t have the money to pay him.
“I’m working without pay," Burke said. "Not furloughed, I’m still working every day, but I’m just not being paid.”
Other civilian employees, who work jobs that are considered non-exempt and don’t support essential functions were furloughed. The military agency estimates that more than 7,000 civilian employees work for the Coast Guard agency wide.
The funding for Burke’s position and many others across the entire Department of Homeland Security has been frozen since Feb. 14 because Congress is in a budgeting stalemate. It’s now the longest government shutdown, partial or full, on record.
“If this continues on, I might have to look for other work," Burke said.
From the outside looking in, “It seems very much like business as usual when they’re still expected to work and yet they have not gotten paid for the duration of this shutdown," Morgan Womboldt, the president of the Coast Guard Spouses Association of Kodiak, said.
Womboldt is married to an active duty member and she said active duty members are still getting paid, although the timing of each paycheck is uncertain.
"However I know from speaking with some of these people who haven’t gotten paid, it’s stressful. It’s stressful, prices are going up whether that be gas, groceries, any of those types of things. They want to leave island, get off island, go travel and now it’s looking at the budget again.," Womboldt said.
The Spouses Association also handles public events like the Santa to the Villages program and the annual community hangar sale. Womboldt said the hangar sale that was scheduled to happen on April 11 was postponed until at least mid-May and the association will have to reevaluate next month if they can still have this year’s sale or not.
The Coast Guard also has a mutual assistance program and various entities like the Chief Petty Officers Association that are providing financial and food assistance to members during the shutdown.
Burke, the civilian employee, got his last full paycheck on February 13 and a partial one later that month. He said thankfully, his wife works a full-time job. And before his civilian job, he retired from the active duty side of the Coast Guard after 25 years of service.
"I have my retirement check coming, my spouse works, we’re financially pretty set; getting by month to month," he said.
But other civilian employees can’t count on other paychecks in their households.
The earliest the shutdown could end is expected to be after the U.S. House of Representatives returns from a break the week of April 13. A bill to reopen and fund the Department of Homeland Security awaits Congressional lawmakers.
