Defense officials want to reduce operating days and hours of most commissaries, as part of an effort to sharply reduce the amount of taxpayer dollars going to support the stores.
Supporting documents for DoD's fiscal 2016 budget request, released Monday, indicate defense officials want to reduce the commissary subsidy by about $300 million, to about $1.15 billion.
Most commissaries would remain open at least five days a week, according to the budget documents. But similar to a proposal floated last year, DoD has bigger plans for reducing the commissary budget, and for raising prices, starting in fiscal 2017.
Officials are asking for legislative changes that would allow them to expand the types of items commissaries sell, and to allow "variable pricing" — i.e., price markups. The surcharge money is used to build, repair, maintain and modernize commissaries, and to pay for store equipment. Taxpayer dollars are used to cover the costs of overhead and employee wages and benefits.
"This will allow goods to be priced above cost to increase revenues on certain items, while providing more savings to a market basket of goods that affect junior members with families the most," according to the budget documents. Currently, all items in commissaries are sold at cost plus a 5 percent surcharge added at the register.
With the help of those additional proposed cuts starting in fiscal 2017, DoD would save a cumulative $4.4 billion from fiscal years 2016 to 2020, according to the budget documents.
In their budget request last year, DoD officials proposed cutting $200 million in Defense Commissary Agency funding, the first phase of a proposed three-year plan to slash the DeCA budget by $1 billion. In the end, lawmakers restored that $200 million to the budget.
It remains to be seen whether lawmakers will be receptive to the latest proposed cuts. Recommendations released by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission on Jan. 29 proposed more modest cuts in the subsidy, and also suggested consolidating the commissary and exchange systems into one retail agency.
Defense officials said the commission's report has not been taken into account in deliberations specifically on the 2016 budget request.
The proposals have raised alarms in some quarters. "If you cut hours, cut days and cut savings, the benefit is no longer a benefit," said Joyce Raezer, executive director of the National Military Family Association.
Draft documents obtained by Military Times note that proposed reductions in operating hours would save more than $29 million in fiscal 2016, and cuts in days of operation would save $58 million.
DeCA operates 241 stores around the world, including 178 domestic locations.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
