Government shutdown 'takes a toll on morale'

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Let’s say there’s a hurricane in Florida, and the National Guard is called to respond and help with cleanup. Who buys the fuel for the trucks?

At the moment, nobody buys the fuel. Palm Coast resident Cody Kennedy and the other full-time employees who buy the supplies for the National Guard are in the office working again, but they do not have any federal money to spend on supplies because of the budget showdown in Congress.

“Some functions of the Florida National Guard are crippled,” said Kennedy, a contract specialist in the U.S. Property and Fiscal Office with the Florida Army National Guard. “If you have a broken radio or Humvee or helicopter, it’s not getting fixed.”

After working until the end of the fiscal year Friday, Sept. 27 — he left work at about 11 p.m. — Kennedy came into the office the next week to be told he was being furloughed, along with just about everyone else in his St. Augustine unit. The troops were still on call, but only a skeleton crew of support staff remained.

“No one thought it was actually going to happen,” Kennedy said. But, he was sent home with the message: When the government finally passes a budget, you’ll get a call.

“That day,” he said, “I went home and just hung out. It was frustrating. It’s even more frustrating for us because we were the only uniformed people that were affected by this furlough.”

The mandatory days off caused a lot of stress at first because there was no guarantee of making up the lost pay. Earlier this year, Kennedy and the others in his office lost 15% of their pay for six weeks because of the previous budget fight, which resulted in sequestration. One woman in the office is still working a second job to make up for that lost pay, Kennedy said. The U.S. House has since approved back pay for the current budget crisis.

And so, Kennedy spent a few days twiddling his thumbs, working out and tinkering with his side business, which is called Vinyl Hunter (he buys rare vinyl records online and sells them to people all around the world).

He also spent time “researching wedding stuff,” he said. (He is officially now in charge of planning his honeymoon next year, when he marries his fiancée, Palm Coast Observer Advertising Account Manager Kaitlin Murray.)

The Florida National Guard is now almost entirely back to work with pay, but still, the time away from work was “a huge bummer,” Kennedy said. In his office there are people who have served tours in Iraq, risking their lives for their country, only to return and be told to take mandatory days off.

Kennedy said: “Even when you do go back to the office and work, you think, ‘When is this going to happen again?’ The whole situation takes a toll on morale.”