Pay mistakes for airmen on combat deployments - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Pay mistakes for airmen on combat deployments

If you deployed to a combat zone in the last three years, check your pay stubs for the time you were gone: There’s at least a one-in-four chance that you either got shorted or got too much.

Either way, the Air Force doesn’t much care. It’s focused on improving the way it tracks deployments and the special compensation tied to it, which led to the mistakes — not finding all the pay errors and correcting them.

An audit by the Department of Defense Inspector General uncovered the pay problems, which could total $8.6 million. A follow-up review by the Air Force confirmed problems but not to the extent identified by the Pentagon. The lost amount, calculated using the findings by the service, adds up to $1.63 million.

The DoD IG found mistakes with more than half — 54 percent — of the pay stubs it checked; the Air Force review found problems with 29 percent.

If you apply the DoD IG findings to the active-duty 65,000 airmen who deployed between Oct. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008, to U.S. Central Command missions, as many as 35,100 airmen received the wrong pay. Even if you use the service’s error rate, 18,850 airmen still had the incorrect amount deposited in their accounts.

Both agencies looked only at fiscal 2008 and used small samples; the Air Force will not check the pay records for every deployed airman deployed in fiscal 2008 because it would be “cost prohibitive,” Jamie Morin, assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management, said in a written statement to Air Force Times.

The Air Force, Morin said, is confident that improvements to the pay system in the past two years should have reduced the number of errors.

“While we are not yet perfect in processing either military pay or travel pay transactions, over the last year we have dramatically improved the quality of our work, including the documentation needed to justify transactions,” Morin said.

Different audits, similar findings

The DoD IG looked at the airmen’s pay records as part of its audit schedule, not at the request of the Air Force or because of any complaints it received. It reviewed the fiscal 2008 records from August 2008 to June 2010, and released the findings to the public Aug. 23.

Investigators randomly pulled pay records for 70 airmen and found errors in 38 files — 13 airmen received too much and 25 had been shorted.

The underpayments totaled $643, with amounts ranging from $238 to less than $10, according to the DoD IG; the overpayments added up to about $8,915, ranging from a penny to $2,025.

If 35,100 airmen received the wrong pay, the number extrapolated from the DoD IG’s error rate, 12,070 airmen pocketed close to $8 million in overpayments and 23,400 airmen came up about $602,000 short.

DoD IG officials notified the Air Force of their findings in July and the service started collecting the overpayments and paying the airmen who had been shorted.

Also, prior to the July briefing, the Air Force was aware of eight cases of overpaid airmen and had started collection efforts.

Morin, the assistant secretary, then began a review of pay records. The Air Force submitted its findings to the DoD IG in a written response dated July 16.

Air Force investigators randomly selected the pay records of 28 airmen, finding errors in eight cases — three airmen had been overpaid and five underpaid. Total amount of the errors: $693.

The Air Force didn’t provide a dollar amount for each mistake, but the average works out to $86.62.

Again, using the number projected from the Air Force’s error rate, 11,608 airmen received about $1 million too much, and 6,955 came up about $606,000 short.

Air Force Times asked the Air Staff’s financial management office if airmen should be concerned about the 29 percent error rate discovered by the internal audit.

“This is a small sample,” spokesman Andre Kok wrote in an e-mail on behalf of Morin. “Airmen will draw their own conclusions based on past experience with their pay and the experience of their fellow airmen. ... Airmen always have access to the local financial services office to address any questions/concerns about pay.”

How mistakes happen

You qualify for special pays when you deploy — hardship duty pay, hostile fire/imminent danger pay and family separation allowance.

The problems stemmed from inaccurate tracking of deployments by finance offices at deployed bases and the Air Force Financial Services Center at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., which processes pay paperwork.

The base-level offices recorded the wrong dates, and Financial Services Center workers mistyped information and then approved payments without copies of the correct documents, such as travel orders, according to the DoD IG. Of the 70 files the IG reviewed, 57 lacked the required supporting documentation.

Besides the documentation, though, finance officials have to track the different compensations and amounts that airmen should receive.

Hardship pay for airmen in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, for example, is $100 a month; airmen in Qatar qualify for $50 a month. To further complicate things, the pay is pro-rated: Arrive in the middle of the month and you qualify for half the maximum monthly amount. Hostile fire pay earns you $225 a month — even if you’re in a combat zone for one day. Family separation allowance, only for airmen with dependents, is worth up to $250 a month and paid on a pro-rated basis similar to hardship pay.

In its response to the DoD IG, the Air Force placed much of the blame on its computers. Software called “Enterprise Information Management,” which automatically transferred pay records from the deployed bases to the center, developed problems and the Air Force stopped using it.

As a temporary fix, the Financial Services Center told bases to manually forward it electronic pay records. The process came with its own headaches, the DoD IG auditors found.

“Because of the need to move electronic documents manually by computer and the number of personnel with access, [the system’s] limitations included the possibility of misplacing document files, losing document files, and accidentally deleting document files,” the audit stated.

The Air Force installed a new version of EIM in February 2008 but had to stop using it in May 2009 because the problems continued, the DoD IG said.

For the last 18 months, the Air Force has been using a version of the manual system that automatically saves documents and requires fewer steps in the entry process.

By January, the Air Force plans to install a third version of EIM.

Beyond an electronic fix, the Financial Services Center promised it would do a better job of training those who process pay records.

“Training is ongoing to ensure that technicians and auditors understand what documentation is required to support entitlement payments for contingency operations,” center commander Col. Judy Perry wrote the DoD IG. “Lastly, quality assurance [personnel] perform a monthly review of processed transactions as part of the manager’s internal control program and notifies the [center] of areas where training is required.”

Your stories

Only a handful of airmen responded when Air Force Times asked readers whether they had pay problems when they deployed.

The dozen or so who shared their stories cited mistakes with their hardship duty pay and hostile fire pay.

A field-grade officer sent to the Persian Gulf region in November 2009 discovered he had received an extra month’s worth of hardship duty pay and a tax exemption for one month for which he didn’t qualify.

“It then took the finance office until April to correct the mistake ... telling me they would take the hostile fire pay back,” the officer said.

As for the incorrect tax exemption, the major paid what the IRS wanted.

“Luckily, I had taken the extra pay and dumped it into my saving account knowing full well something like this would happen,” the officer said.

A senior airman received his hostile fire pay, hardship duty pay and tax exemption for his six months in Iraq only after he returned home to Hill Air Force Base, Utah. He discovered the mistakes overseas and notified the deployed base finance office, but the problems never got fixed. Finally, Hill finance officials sorted things out.

“I know the finance people don’t have an easy job because they have to deal with lots of mad people,” the airman said. “Things need to change.”