Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service headquarters on the northeast side of Indianapolis would lose about 225 Marine
Corps payroll jobs if two congressmen from northern Ohio have their way.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and Rep. Steven LaTourette, a Republican, in February asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates
to move the Indianapolis jobs to a DFAS center in Cleveland.
So far, the Indianapolis DFAS headquarters has not been breached by the politicians intent on pleasing their constituents
back in the Buckeye State.
“I know they have allocated the space for them (Marine Corps payroll workers) there in the building” in Indianapolis,
said DFAS spokesman Tom LaRock.
The Marine Corps payroll workers are among about 1,000 people being transferred to the Indianapolis facility as a result
of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission determination. Several DFAS facilities have been shut down or are being
closed, including those in Denver and Kansas City.
The Indianapolis facility employed 2,600 just a few years ago. That number should settle out at about 3,600 this year, said
LaRock.
Kucinich and LaTourette said the BRAC commission determined that all Marine Corps DFAS jobs would be based in Cleveland,
“but were erroneously diverted to DFAS Indianapolis.”
Their letter to Gates states that Cleveland officials in 2007 learned the jobs would go to Indianapolis instead because of
a computer system used here that the Marine Corps would be adopting. But the Marine Corps later opted out of that new system.
“The rational basis for these Marine Corps jobs relocating to Indianapolis is obsolete. We ask that you immediately
enforce the decision of the BRAC Commission to relocate these jobs to Cleveland as recommended,” the Ohio congressmen
said in their letter to Gates.
Earlier this year, LaRock said it still made sense for the Marine Corps jobs to remain in Indianapolis because of the need
to work with the facility’s information technology personnel.
The Indianapolis facility at 8899 E. 56th St. processes pay for active soldiers and retirees.
The shift of about 1,000 jobs to the massive facility at the former Fort Benjamin Harrison has left AT&T Indiana scrambling
to provide 10,000 consecutive direct-dial phone lines to DFAS.
AT&T recently asked the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to grant on an expedited basis its request to direct a
phone-line-pooling administrator firm to free up the blocks of lines, saying the General Services Administration “indicated
that a delay in obtaining the requested resources will have an adverse affect on DFAS’s war-fighting mission.”
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.