Internal documents obtained by The New York Times show that the Coast Guard’s ship maintenance command lost at least 7,456 productive workdays — or 28.5 years’ worth of workdays — as a direct result of the partial shutdown, which furloughed 6,400 civilian employees.
“This reality poses significant risk to operational availability of cutters and boats,” the documents concluded.
The service also noted a “domino effect” that has caused delays in repairs and maintenance on its roughly 200 aircraft, which, in turn, could keep them from being immediately available.
There are “tremendous backlogs of contractor work,” the documents said.
The delays are expected to significantly limit the number of ships and aircraft available for Coast Guard operations, which generally include drug interdiction as well as search-and-rescue and maritime safety missions. They will also affect the training of the uniformed and civilian Coast Guard force.
“You can get the money, but you can never get the time,” said Mark F. Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s going to hurt them for quite a while.”
The shutdown ended Jan. 25. But over 35 days, most federal agencies were unable to pay their employees or contractors. That included the Coast Guard, the only branch of the military that is not part of the Defense Department. As a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard went without pay until the shutdown ended.
During the shutdown, Coast Guard members “continued activities authorized by law that provided for national security and protected life and property,” Chief Warrant Officer Barry Lane, a Coast Guard spokesman in Washington, said in a statement to The Times on Friday. “The Coast Guard stopped or curtailed some specific mission activities that did not fall into those categories.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.