Letter to Major General Richard J. Hayes, Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, Army Illinois National Guard - Pentagon Bonus Clawbacks and Illinois National Guardsmen

Letter

Dear Major General Hayes:

As you are aware, significant congressional attention is focused on the plight of thousands of California National Guard members who were forced to repay enlistment bonuses that military recruiters improperly offered during an intense push to enlist Servicemembers to deploy as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom -- Afghanistan.

The United States Government is right to hold perpetrators of fraud accountable for criminal activity. However, efforts to recoup improper payments become counterproductive when wage garnishment and tax lien collection efforts extend beyond individuals who willfully defraud the system and target thousands of brave men and women who accepted enlistment bonuses years ago that they believed were proper (and had no reasonable way of knowing otherwise).

The U.S. Department of Defense's recent suspension of collection efforts was a prudent and proper first step to do right by our Servicemembers and Veterans. Punishing Americans who honorably answered the call to serve is unconscionable. The vast majority of individuals who served in the California National Guard were not aware that the incentive bonuses and tuition assistance were improperly offered, either by error or as part of criminal scheme.

While significant attention has rightfully fallen on the California National Guard problem, it is reasonable to presume that similar improper incentive payment problems may be present in other states. That is why over the past few days my office worked with your Illinois National Guard (ILNG) staff to determine what program integrity initiatives are in place to prevent improper incentive payments from being made, while proactively auditing finances to identify and address any payment errors.

I was pleased that the ILNG was able to provide my office with assurance that your organization appears to be actively managing financial risk and conducts annual internal audits to identify and prevent waste, fraud and abuse. I commend you for being able to report: "For more than 10 years, going back to the mid-2000s, the Illinois National Guard and its appointed Incentives Managers have not knowingly processed or awarded incentives or bonuses that did not meet the regulatory criteria of record at the time."

I also applaud ILNG for working with the National Guard Bureau (NGB) to perform a separate audit in January 2015 examining bonus payments. Although NGB determined that out of thousands of bonuses paid, 67 were improper -- it is notable that in every case, the soldier was in fact eligible for the payment and the "improper" categorization was solely a result of clerical or procedural errors and not fraud. Further, I appreciate your leadership in acting under existing authority to resolve 52 of these cases by waiving the recoupment of bonuses and urge that waivers in the remaining 15 cases be finalized.

As a Member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I am committed to rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. Reducing improper payment rates, penalizing bad actors and ensuring honest Servicemembers and Veterans are relieved of unreasonable financial hardships does not represent a zero sum exercise.

Accordingly, I am interested in learning more about ILNG's program integrity efforts, which may hold valuable lessons for other states to learn from. While the California Guardsmen received a temporary halt to the recoupment of their bonuses, Congress must act to develop and pass a long-term solution to fix this problem and ensure it does not happen again in any state. To identify best practices that other states may wish to model and replicate, please provide my office with the following:

1. Describe the scope of the 2015 audit -- how many years did it cover, which specific bonuses and incentive payments were included, what entity performed the review, along with any other pertinent information;

2. The statutory and regulatory authority that enabled you to decisively act to resolve the improper payment incidents uncovered in the 2015 audit;

3. The training and education ILNG provides its members to ensure they are able to appeal decisions in a timely manner and seek relief when appropriate;

4. The NGB 2015 audit indicates ILNG employs effective program integrity and oversight policies and procedures -- please identify specific protocols and best-practices ILNG implements that contributed to this apparent success; and finally

5. Confirm that the combination of the 2015 NGB audit and the annual internal audits is sufficient to provide assurance that a problem of the severity found in California does not exist in the Illinois National Guard.

Thank you for your attention to this issue. I look forward to your response and working with your office in the future to support our Servicemembers and Veterans, while safeguarding taxpayer dollars.

Sincerely,

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