Lawmakers press Navy on ship maintenance

The Pentagon still has to deal with sequestration, but its
budget issues were alleviated somewhat by the passage of the continuing
resolution last week, which included a full-year Defense appropriations bill.

{mosads}That allowed the Pentagon to shift an additional $10 billion
into operations and maintenance accounts that were facing major shortfalls.

The Pentagon still faces more than $40 billion in across-the-board
cuts under sequestration, however, meaning ship maintenance might not be saved
from the budget ax yet.

The lawmakers said they were concerned the Navy would still
cancel the ship maintenance in the third and fourth quarters of fiscal
2013 despite the continuing resolution.

“It is our understanding that by alleviating the restrictive
nature of a continuing resolution, we would see restoration of the maintenance availabilities
that were potentially subject to cancellation,” wrote the lawmakers, led by
Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.).

“We are concerned that the Navy may choose to use some of
its transfer latitude granted under the FY13 Department of Defense
Appropriations to hedge future consequences of sequestration by going forward
with cancellation in whole or part of 3rd and 4th quarter ship maintenance availabilities,”
they wrote. “This is not an acceptable solution for us or the taxpayers.”

Rigell said in a release accompanying the letter that the
Hampton Roads region he represents could suffer “thousands of job losses” should
the Navy cancel some of the 11 maintenance availabilities previously scheduled
in Norfolk, Va.