Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Medium
Reduced funding following the end of the Cold War has been compounded by a $93 million error discovered late last year in national funding for the Guard, Maj. Gen. Carroll Thackson told a group of Smyth County business people at a breakfast at the Marion armory.
"We are now trying to live with a $93 million mistake," he said, on top of a national defense budget which, even at more than $250 billion, is 35 percent less than it was 10 years ago.
During this fiscal year, he said, hiring has been frozen, all temporary employees have been laid off, enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses have been canceled, recruits from the active Army can only be taken in jobs for which they are already trained, extra-duty pay is gone, and units are being allowed only 60 percent of their allocated numbers.
"We were actually short, in the Virginia Army National Guard, $1 million in our payroll this year," he said. "The sad part is our workload is not being reduced. In fact, it's growing larger each day."
As a result of all that, he said, people in Halifax County, his home, wondered if Thackson had taken leave of his senses in accepting Gov. George Allen's appointment as adjutant general this month.
"It's a real challenge, and I'm looking forward to it," he said.
Virginia will lose about one-fourth of its 29th Division, about 1,500 slots, which will move to Connecticut and Massachusetts, Thackson said. Other new units will be moved to the state, so the net loss will be 500 to 700 slots.
But those new units will be doing other things, he said, and the Guard lacks the money to train them.
"We're under the same rules that General Thackson is," said Col. Richard Dyer, with the U.S. Army Reserves. "We've got to recruit people who are already trained."
A battalion in Bristol will be deactivated in the cuts, Dyer said, but most of its members will be reassigned to an Abingdon unit.
Lt. Col. Claude Williams, commander of the 1030th Engineering Battalion of the Virginia National Guard covering Scott, Lee and Wise counties and the city of Bristol, said the Guard pumps $8.9 million into that part of the state.
"We think about 20 or 25 percent are going to retire or ask to be transferred to the Ready Reserve," he said. That includes $6.3 million into Scott County alone, he said, where tobacco - the region's top cash crop - totals only $6 million.
by CNB