Who Pays for Reservists When They Respond to Disasters?

Congress should act to fund Navy Reserve (NR) domestic emergency response at an adequate level. While current funding procedures meet most immediate mission needs, they eviscerate reserve training budgets to pay for disaster relief, an activity that is not and cannot be programmed for in the Reserve’s personnel (RPN) budget. Fortunately, a model for mitigating the situation exists: intelligence Funded Reimbursable Authority (FRA). The model should be applied to defense support to civil authorities (DSCA) activities, thus permitting the exchange of operations and maintenance for RPN.[1] Two supplemental changes would serve as additional critical enablers:

• Permitting reimbursement of pay and allowances for Reservists deployed in that mission
• Extending the obligation authority for RPN for an additional year, making it “two-year money”

Problems

Navy emergency preparedness liaison officers (NEPLOs) coordinate and execute Navy DSCA plans and responsibilities. The involuntary mobilization authorities granted by 10 USC § 12304a are geared specifically for response by uniformed members of the Department of Defense (typically an EPLO) to “a major disaster or emergency . . . for a continuous period of not more than 120 days to respond to the Governor’s request.”²

However, the hindrance of parallel active component and reserve component military pay accounts—an affliction unique to the Navy—has effectively precluded use of this mobilization authority, with an estimated 36 Navy personnel so mobilized, compared to hundreds throughout the other services.³ The mobilization approval process itself can take weeks, while emergency DSCA, the raison d’être of the NEPLO program, requires a response within hours.

To meet mission, NEPLOs often deploy under voluntary 10 USC § 12301(d) orders, commonly known as active duty for training (ADT). Since it is funded with RPN dollars, the NEPLO’s reserve pay account does not have to be audited and closed, nor a different “active” pay account created. While this buys execution speed, it comes with significant drawbacks. First, the reservist can say “no thanks” precisely when the Navy and nation need him most. Second, RPN dollars are relatively finite (an estimated $119 million for ADT-Special in FY 19, of which less than $0.5 million was budgeted for NEPLOs), and it was intended for planned training, not disaster relief participation.

Transitioning middeployment (at the earliest opportunity) to 12304a orders (using active component dollars) would seem to be an obvious choice, but the dual pay systems again injects massive delays and disruptions in the NEPLO’s pay and allowances, as well as travel reimbursement. Instructive is the case of a petty officer sent to Puerto Rico, who incurred approximately $20,000 in valid GTCC debt, yet received no compensation, per diem, or travel expense reimbursement for months. Though he did nothing wrong—indeed, he volunteered to serve—the deficiencies of the dual pay systems jeopardized the mission, hazarded the sailor’s good credit, and nearly cost him his security clearance.

At the conclusion of a disaster, states and non-DoD Federal entities reimburse the Navy. In the case of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), funds flow from its disaster relief fund appropriation. That “makes the Navy whole,” but only when the service is viewed as a monolith. By regulation, the Navy should credit funds spent in support of disaster relief to the RPN account, rather than to operations and maintenance accounts. In reality, because of legal prohibitions on reprograming funds, that does not happen, so those reimbursed funds do not generally make it back to RPN coffers.^5]The active component pockets an unplanned windfall from funds that had been appropriated for reserve training and readiness. Perversely, the Navy’s unwillingness to credit RPN accounts initially, and its inability to reprogram FEMA-reimbursed operations and maintenance to RPN later, subverts the will and intent of Congress.

Disaster seasonality poses a related challenge. According to the National Hurricane Center, “The peak of [hurricane] season is from mid-August to late October” for the Atlantic Basin. Because the fiscal year (FY) ends in September, there is little incentive for the Navy to diligently pursue reimbursement of funds that it can no longer obligate when paid in the new FY.

Finally, current regulations only permit FEMA to reimburse travel and per diem for Federal military personnel, even though—in the case of NEPLOs—their call to active duty is “solely to the performance of services directed” by FEMA. While this makes sense for active component sailors, it does not fully capture the incremental costs to reservists.

(Partial) Solutions

Congress should treat NEPLOs as analogs to the “temporary Federal agency personnel” who are similarly situated—that is, only on duty for the performance of services directed by FEMA—and make NEPLO basic pay and allowances eligible for reimbursement.^6]

To address the seasonal issue, Congress should (under 31 U.S. Code § 1557) extend the obligation authority of any “one year” funds (such as RPN or operations and maintenance) for an additional year, up to the amount those apportions were expended on disaster relief.^7] This could function in a way comparable to the existing carve out for “unusual cost overruns and for changes in scope of work” for ship maintenance and repair.

Last, until the Navy establishes a unified pay account for active and reserve component sailors, Congress should endorse the not-so-radical idea that disaster relief within the United States is equally as important as intelligence and counterintelligence support.^8] When the nation is ravaged by disaster, NELPOs serve their communities by saving lives, preventing human suffering, and mitigating great property damage. A one-paragraph section for Navy DSCA FRA inserted into the next Defense appropriation could permit the Navy to replenish, dollar for dollar, the RPN funds reprogrammed for disaster relief. A similar provision also should be considered for the time-critical mission of submarine rescue, a capability resident only in the reserve component.

However necessary—and however easy a win for some motivated staff member on an Armed Services Committee—it is important to note that this solution is only a bandage on a fractured pay system. Reservists recalled on ADT orders do not benefit from accrual of “dwell time” or the enhanced Tricare benefits that they would if mobilized under 12304a. Neither are such ADT orders automatically exempted from the five-year service limit under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.^9] (Secretary Spencer, if you’re reading this, please exempt emergency disaster relief and real-world submarine rescue missions).

So who pays for a disaster? Until Congress enacts the three fixes noted above, the NEPLOs we send to help solve it do.