Around 800 full-time Wyoming National Guard employees are working for free under the federal government shutdown, the branch leader told lawmakers meeting in Cheyenne on Monday.
They are entitled to back pay once appropriations resume, the agency’s spokesman told Cowboy State Daily a follow-up email Monday.
Maj. Gen. Gregory Porter, Wyoming National Guard adjutant general, originally told the legislative Transportation, Highways, and Military Affairs Committee during its meeting in Cheyenne, that around 786 full-time guard employees would start missing out on paychecks this week.
In a follow-up email through its strategic communications director Joseph “Cos” Coslett Jr., the guard clarified that the number of full-time employees working through the shutdown is, rather, 826.
“All those folks you see back here are working for free right now,” Porter told the committee. “We’ll see where that goes. Don’t have a lot of indication there’s an end in sight.”
Porter said he had excepted all those employees from being furloughed, keeping them at work because all the duties they perform are “deemed as essential.”
Hiring Freeze
The financial pinch is in addition to pre-existing issues, including a reduced appropriation for the Army, and by extension the Army National Guard, within the continuing resolution Congress passed in March.
“Those reductions created funding shortfalls for military and civilian pay accounts across the Army National Guard, resulting in a nationwide hiring freeze,” wrote Coslett, adding that the Air National Guard also saw a cutback in the continuing resolution.
The freeze left the guard with 66 vacancies, Porter said.
The branch could see nine more, he added, “If the (National Defense Appropriations Act) goes through as the president’s budget indicates right now.”
“Not helpful for us,” said Porter. “We need everybody we can get, and reduction of full-time manning doesn’t help our readiness.”
Coslett noted that the vacancies are in a “variety of areas,” including supply and logistics, recruiting, vehicle and aircraft maintenance, medical services and information technology.
ICE
The guard is continuing to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), lending 14 members to those missions.
“They’re a little busier than what I thought they’d be doing,” said Porter. “They’re definitely not bored.”
At an August meeting of the same committee, Porter lamented funding shortfalls while also discussing guard members’ new missions helping ICE.
Helping ICE doesn’t exacerbate funding woes tied to the shutdown, Coslett wrote Monday, since the immigration-enforcing members are working without pay as well.
His email says those personnel generally perform data entry, database management and the transportation of ICE detainees within the state.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
