From militarytimes.com
The commissary budget will take a 21 percent cut in fiscal 2020, if the Defense Department’s budget request is approved by Congress.
Defense officials are asking for $995 million in taxpayer funding to operate the 236 commissary stores worldwide, down from $1.27 billion in fiscal 2019, according to DoD budget documents released Tuesday.
The Defense Commissary Agency’s budget reduction “is tied to a series of DoD internally directed cuts that began in fiscal 2016,” said DoD spokeswoman Air Force Lt. Col. Carla Gleason. Since that time, she said, the commissary agency has been taking steps, to “reduce its operating costs to meet anticipated topline funding, while still maintaining customer service levels and congressionally mandated patron savings levels.”
Gleason said the Defense Commissary Agency doesn’t expect the cut to have any impact on customers.
Part of the reduction is due to an 11 percent decrease in the commissary work force. Those work force cuts in the Defense Commissary Agency started in fiscal 2019 and will carry forward into fiscal 2020 — going from 14,000 employees worldwide to 12,500.
The reduction in the number of employees, “as a result of the efficiencies we are gaining, helps position us to absorb a portion of the cut,” Gleason said. The agency will continue to make changes in its staffing, to include the reduction of an additional 500 employees in fiscal 2020, while making sure “that our stores will have the right number of people to deliver the expected level of service,” she said.
