Incentive payments to persuade some Hill Air Force Base employees to retire or resign early last year were mistakenly sweeter than expected.
In fact, accounting errors gave some temporarily lucky workers up to double what they expected. Others workers had opposite luck and were underpaid.But the base - which is seeking more volunteers for early retirements next year to soften the blow of expected layoffs then - says all the errors have been ironed out since they were discovered by the Air Force Audit Agency.
They were among several problems at Hill uncovered late last year and this year by inspectors for that Pentagon agency, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.
But Hill - which is fighting to survive base closures - says problems found are typical of any base and thus do not threaten Hill's chances much. It complains, though, that Deseret News reporting about them and other past probes might.
"None of the other Air Logistics Centers (competing with Hill for survival) or bases similar to Hill are currently receiving this degree of exposure for their audit reports," a written response from Hill said.
Problems with the incentive payments were found when the Air Force Audit Agency looked at a random sample of them - and found an 8 percent error rate. That prompted Hill to conduct an audit of all incentive payments it had made.
It said that of those 1,135 early-out incentive payments, 55 had errors. That is one of every 20.
Three employees received erroneous, duplicate payments of $25,000 each, according to documents.
"One employee immediately returned the duplicate check," auditors wrote. The others didn't. Formal efforts to recover the money didn't begin until three months after the Air Force confirmed that erroneous checks were sent.
The range of other mistakes ranged from overpayment of $10,669 to underpayment of $1,027. A written statement from Hill said all of the problems have been corrected.
Meanwhile, documents showed that inspectors found several other snafus at the base in reports issued between Oct. 1, 1993, and April 1 this year. They
include: - Hill's Ogden Air Logistics Center had overcharged foreign countries about $384,000 in labor costs for aircraft repairs. It also had improperly written off - or decided not to collect - $70,000 for similar foreign repairs.
- Hill violated rules by not recalling airmen from off-base housing when occupancy rates at on-base dormitories fell below 95 percent. Auditors said the base may have lost up to $241,920 over a five-month period it reviewed in
1993. - Hill improperly managed a contract for archaeologists to search Air Force lands for sites that may need protection. Contractors surveyed three times as many acres - and billed for it - than was authorized by contracts.
- A plastics shop ordered more material than necessary, possibly wasting $140,000 over a six-month period last year.
- Hill failed to develop accurate and complete lists of material that should be recovered from old Minuteman II missiles for possible use with Minuteman IIIs - which might have cost millions in unnecessary orders for similar equipment.
- Hill and other air logistics centers inappropriately established duplicative shops to manufacture some supplies.
In response, Hill issued a statement that such audits "are a way of life in the Air Force" that give commanders an extra set of eyes to help fine-tune its internal processes. It said Hill receives about as many audits as similar bases - so that shouldn't hurt in base-closure fights.
But it adds: "Summarizing the findings of audits in the Deseret News helps to subject Ogden Air Logistics Center and Hill to a greater degree of public scrutiny and criticism than would otherwise be experienced.
"This in turn could contribute somewhat to a degradation of Ogden ALC's and Hill's professional image and reputation when compared to other organizations and bases whose audit reports are not similarly publicized."
The Deseret News covers the base closely because it is the state's single-largest employer, it is threatened by planned base closures and base officials say it is among the most efficient bases in the nation and community groups have rallied to help save it.
Reporting on similar documents dug out through the Freedom of Information Act have ranged from finding the base may have paid janitors to clean buildings that had been demolished, to poor scheduling that led to unnecessary reshuffling of missiles along Intermountain highways to and from the base for repairs.