WASHINGTON — The number of Oregon National Guard soldiers who were denied portions of their enlistment bonuses in 2011 has ballooned to 61, more than three times the number the Guard Bureau acknowledged in August.

Earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter, the acting director of the Army National Guard, reported to Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, that of the 61 Oregon soldiers who had bonus payments denied in 2011, 51 had been paid, while three were pending and seven were being reviewed on the state level.

The disputes surround enlistment bonuses promised by National Guard recruiters during an effort to boost the National Guard’s ranks between 2006 and 2009. The bonuses, as spelled out in contracts signed by the soldiers and representatives of the National Guard, were generally payable half upon completion of initial training and half after three years of service.

Depending on the specialized job that the recruit agreed to fill, the bonuses could be as much as $20,000.

The National Guard Bureau said this summer that a computer glitch — created when physical files were transferred into an electronic database starting in March 2009 — caused the military to deny payment of the second installment for thousands of soldiers. In August, Carpenter said that of 4,000 nationwide that had been rejected, 3,200 were quickly corrected, and of the remaining 800, all but 106 had been reviewed individually and resolved in the soldiers’ favor.

The new numbers suggest the issue is much larger than previously discussed. If the numbers for Oregon are typical (roughly 10 cases per congressional district), then, based on an average payment denied of $7,500, more than $32 million in bonuses was wrongly withheld from members of the National Guard in 2011.

For a roughly three-year window, the total approaches $100 million.

In response to repeated requests from The Bulletin, the Guard Bureau has said that it is still compiling information from fiscal years 2009 and 2010, and is unable provide totals for the number of cases and amount of bonus money at issue during those years.

Disenchanted with the guard

For Spc. Courtney Blaisdell of Beaverton, the decision to enlist in the 234th Army Band, the National Guard unit known as “Oregon’s Own,” came down to music. In April 2007, she was about to graduate from college, and the then-21-year-old was happy about the opportunity to keep playing the clarinet in a structured setting.

Her undergraduate band professor had been in the Navy, and encouraged her to consider the military. The then-commander of the 234th sold her on the benefits of signing up, which included a $20,000 enlistment bonus.

“Even though I was excited to join, I was also somewhat hesitant,” she said. “At first I was scared to go to boot camp, but I ended up really liking it.”

While the primary focus is on music, members of the 234th also have to keep up with their weapons and survival training, just like any other unit, she said.

Because she went on inactive duty for a few months in 2009 when she had a baby, Blaisdell’s three-year anniversary, when she would become eligible to receive the second part of her enlistment bonus, was pushed back to August 2010. While on an annual training exercise in Texas, one member of her unit was paid the second installment when it came due, while Blaisdell and another soldier didn’t receive theirs, she said.

“We finally found out in mid-September that the National Guard Bureau was disputing our bonus,” saying they never should have been eligible in the first place, she said.

For more than a year, Blaisdell tried to get the Guard Bureau to pay her, or at least explain why not. Members of her unit helped as much as they could, filling out paperwork and working up the chain of command, but she felt like she wasn’t getting any answers until media reports began appearing last summer.

“I felt like it was just dead end after dead end,” she said. “It was in my contract, so of course I believed that they had to (pay me).”

Finally, at the end of October, the Guard Bureau notified Blaisdell that she had been granted an exception to policy, meaning that the bureau was going to pay her.

While Blaisdell remains positive about her unit, the experience of fighting for her enlistment bonus has left her soured on the National Guard. When her time is up in 2013, she doesn’t think she’ll re-up.

“Even if I was given the chance to get a bonus to re-enlist, I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “My trust with the National Guard organization has been broken.”

If she had failed to live up to her end by skipping weapons training or not going to drills, she could have been dishonorably discharged, she said.

“If a contract with the National Guard doesn’t mean anything …,” she said, her voice trailing off. “It’s just a matter of principle with me.”

Blaisdell isn’t the only Oregon soldier whose anniversary payment was approved within the past few weeks.

“A soldier’s family in Central Oregon contacted Rep. Walden to let them know they were experiencing the same thing that had happened to Chelsea Wells (a soldier from Milton-Freewater who went public with her dispute over her bonus in July). The second half of the bonus was months overdue,” from June to October, said Andrew Whelan, Walden’s spokesman. “Rep. Walden got in touch with the National Guard’s legislative office, and they turned it around (and approved payment) in one day.”

Unanswered questions

In July, the entire Oregon delegation wrote to H. Cronin Byrd, the inspector general of the National Guard Bureau, requesting an independent investigation into enlistment bonuses.

On Oct. 3, Donna Warren, the chief of congressional inquiries for the Guard Bureau’s Legislative Liaison Office, responded on Byrd’s behalf that an independent review confirmed that the National Guard Bureau had paid members of the Oregon National Guard their enlistment bonuses “because they signed their contracts in good faith, and met their obligations based on what was offered and/or available at the time of their enlistment.”

Last week, Walden wrote to Carpenter, expressing his frustration with the lack of answers from the Guard Bureau.

“I appreciate your continued commitment to honoring bonus contracts signed in good faith by National Guard soldiers,” he wrote, adding that he appreciated the bureau’s efforts to review contracts before any upcoming anniversary dates to prevent additional disputes.

“We agreed during our meetings this summer that the contract glitches are not the fault of the soldiers. The soldiers honored their contracts to the letter. The onus is on the National Guard to seek out soldiers who have been denied their bonuses and pay them the money they were promised for wearing the country’s uniform.”

The response “on behalf of” the inspector general fell far short of the investigation requested, he wrote.

“I am disappointed that the question posed by the entire delegation was not answered or even acknowledged in the ‘response’ from the Inspector General,” the letter states. “So I’ll ask you: To date, how many soldiers in Oregon and nationwide have been wrongfully denied their anniversary incentive payments? What are your plans for ensuring that every single one of them receives the payment they have earned?”