Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay

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 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/politics/government-shutdown-coast-guard.html" id="47057290-4660-368b-ae27-a4bf4e0d3b28">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown that ended last month has taken a lasting hit on the Coast Guard, which has grounded aircraft, stopped major ship repairs and will leave parts of an air station in Puerto Rico without emergency generators for the start of hurricane season because of a backlog that will take months to process.

After Shutdown, Grounded Planes and Delayed Repairs Ripple Through Coast Guard

The shutdown ended Jan. 25. But over 35 days, as President Donald Trump held out for $5.7 billion in congressional funding for a border wall, 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. According to the documents, the Coast Guard finance center in Virginia processed about $46,000 in mutual assistance loans — funds often reserved for dire personal hardships — and at least one special request for a service member who sought approval for outside employment.

The documents, dated the day before the shutdown ended, outlined a grim forecast for the small service of 55,000 active duty, reserve and civilian employees.

Over the last decade, the Coast Guard has struggled to secure steady funding levels from Congress. It did receive a $600 million lift this month after a spending bill funded a replacement for the Polar Star, the Coast Guard’s only heavy icebreaker.

But the shutdown hobbled the vessel, which the documents described as one of the Coast Guard’s “highest priority” ships. The spare parts inventory for the 400-foot Polar Star’s three Pratt and Whitney gas turbine engines were “below safety stock levels,” the documents said, and an employee was taken off furlough to work on a maintenance contract issue for the vessel.

Other examples of the shutdown’s effects on the Coast Guard included:

— Roughly 600 employees at the Aviation Logistics Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, potentially would have to work overtime for five to seven months to make up for production lost during the impasse.

— The number of aircraft across the Coast Guard deemed “not mission capable” doubled to 10 percent of the aircraft, from 5 percent. Twenty-five aircraft — roughly 12 percent of the Coast Guard fleet — that are under maintenance have had their completion dates pushed back a total of 277 days.

In the short term, that has created a weekslong delay of delivering a training helicopter to Mobile, Alabama, and a surveillance aircraft to Miami. The surveillance aircraft are often used for maritime patrols and spotting drug runners.

— In Alaska, a dry dock needed for repairs to the 110-foot cutter Liberty was closed as a result of the shutdown. The Liberty patrols some of the world’s most dangerous waters and was preparing to go to sea from its home port in Auke Bay in mid-January when one of its diesel engines seized.

— An engine replacement in one Legend-class cutter and modifications to the small boat launching equipment in the rest of the fleet were delayed. The Legend cutters were built specifically to support Pentagon operations; the ships already were plagued by cost overruns and delays.

— Crucial maintenance was pushed back for two “buoy tenders” — smaller boats meant to ensure the position of navigational markers on internal waterways and rivers. One was based in Keokuk, Iowa, on the upper Mississippi River, where thousands of tons of cargo pass through annually. The other, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, maintains markers in the Tennessee River and seven other rivers, as well as two creeks and one other waterway.

— At Coast Guard Air Station Borniquen in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria tore through in 2017, a project to install emergency generators for base housing “will not be in place before the start of hurricane season,” which begins June 1.

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Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay

Articles written by the author

After Shutdown, Grounded Planes and Delayed Repairs Ripple Through Coast Guard

After Shutdown, Grounded Planes and Delayed Repairs Ripple Through Coast Guard