Army officials overestimated the number of civilian positions the agency would need for fiscal 2017 and then used the excess money to pay for unrelated budget items that had been subject to directives to cut expenses, an IG audit has concluded.
While the requested full-time equivalent positions was consistent with the immediate prior years, the Army had actually used fewer FTEs in each of those prior years and expected to again, it said, producing an excess in the account to pay them, called CIVPAY. They then “misused CIVPAY budget policy to pay for non-pay operating expenses that were underfunded.”
The Army was allowed to use appropriated funds for purposes other than intended, as long as the funds are used within the same appropriation and are below a $15 million threshold set by Congress, it said. However, the Army also was subject to directives to cut expenses on items such as IT, service support contracts, travel, printing, conferences, copying and more–but used some of the excess for such purposes, the IG report said.
It said that officials “stated that they would not reduce the CIVPAY budget and increase the non-pay expenses in the Army’s budget because they did not want Congress to see non-pay cost growth . . . [and] that Congress frequently cut non-pay expenses and acknowledged that the President and DoD directed non-pay cuts. The officials stated that CIVPAY must be funded, making it less likely that the budget would be cut during budget reviews.”
The report concluded that “the Army’s decision to not accurately present its funding needs is a misuse of CIVPAY budget policy to create additional funding to pay for the non-pay expenses that the President and DoD directed the Army to cut.”
In response, the Army “stated that the finding was out of context and discarded several key factors,” the report said. However, the IG said it stands by its conclusions.
