About one hour before Congress cleared the way for a vote expected to extend funding for the federal government to Feb. 8, nearly 1,000 West Virginia National Guard employees received furlough notices and drove home not knowing when they would return to work or get their next paychecks.
Most of those involved in the furlough were federally funded technicians, some uniformed and some not, who perform a wide range of tasks for the Guard.
About 600 full-time West Virginia Army and Air National Guard soldiers and airmen remained on the job, but were working without pay until a continuing resolution could be hammered out and voted in to restore federal funding.
While the most recent government shutdown appeared to be short-lived, it was not without consequences. In addition to causing anxiety over when the furlough would end and when or if many of those who remained on the job would be repaid, the government shutdown halted National Guard training exercises and diminished its ability to rapidly respond to a crisis.
“We had to reduce the number of people we have on duty to get our airplanes, helicopters and vehicles ready to go,” said Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, the state’s adjutant general, in announcing Monday’s furloughs. Such a reduction can add an hour or more to response time, which “costs the government in terms of our readiness,” and could potentially cost lives, he said.
Hoyer said a planned three-day regimental-scale exercise involving Bradley Fighting Vehicle-equipped Guard units from West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina got underway Friday afternoon at the WVNG’s new training area on the 12,000-acre former Hobet surface mine south of Charleston.
“At 12:01 a.m. on Saturday (when the continuing funding resolution expired), we had to pull all those people in, feed them and send them home. ... And we’re not going to get that training time back,” Hoyer said.
West Virginia National Guard personnel attending military training schools at installations across the nation were uncertain about whether they would be able to continue their training or be sent home, where their jobs may have been temporarily been filled by someone else.
A government shutdown in 2013 that lasted 16 days caused similar furloughs to occur, creating widespread anxiety over pay and related matters, Hoyer said.
“We need to find some kind of solution to this situation,” Hoyer said of the federal funding impasse. “It’s hurting a lot of families who put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this organization. We owe it to them to get this fixed.”
Congress, he said “has got to quit blaming each other and get past this issue.”
Hoyer, in his role as chairman of the National Guard Association of the United States, said he plans to push for funding the National Guard and other Department of Defense entities on a two-year cycle to avoid having to deal with often-partisan continuing resolution hassles.
Assuming that a vote sometime on Monday succeeds in extending funding for the operation of the federal government to Feb. 8, those who were furloughed on Monday would be notified to return to work on Tuesday.
“It’s my understanding that once a budget or continuing resolution is passed, then those furloughed employees will get a notification to return to work the next day,” said Capt. Holli R. Nelson, spokeswoman for the West Virginia National Guard.
