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| News > Feature - Lajes Comptrollers: "No money, No mission" |
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Capt. Frank Skrypak, 65th Comptroller Flight, commander and Arsénio Romeiro, 65th CPTF, budget analyst, review financial documents during their close-out process, Sept. 26, 2012, Lajes Field. (Photo by Lucas Silva)
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Lajes Comptrollers: "No money, No mission"
Posted 9/28/2012 Updated 10/26/2012
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by Staff Sgt. Erica Horner
65th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
9/28/2012 - LAJES FIELD, Azores -- Within the last two years, the 65th Comptroller Flight's small, but efficient team has won numerous awards to include having the number one United States Air Forces Europe Government Travel Card program, the best USAFE financial services office and the number one USAFE Comptroller Squadron in financial metrics for 2011.
"We have a strong comptroller flight," said Capt. Frank Skrypak, the 65th Comptroller Flight commander. "This includes all of our Airmen and our local nationals; they are a powerhouse."
Two sections within the flight -Financial Services and Financial Analysis - stay incredibly busy.
"Our Financial Services Office primarily handles military pay and travel pay while the Financial Analysis Section handles the budget for the base," said Skrypak.
While FSO handles the day-to-day mission and ensures the Airmen are focused on their mission and not their pay, FMA aids in funding that mission.
Each year the budget section receives an allocation of money from USAFE to run the wing's mission and its priorities financially, says Skrypak.
"We are able to provide financial resources to the wing to do their mission, and we also provide decision support to foster efficiencies," said Skrypak, whose personnel in the budget sections are trained in expert decision support. "This is especially important in this day and age as financial resources are becoming more and more scarce."
This time of year, one hot item the CPTF manages is the end of the fiscal year closeout.
"We are obligated to the congressional budget which runs on a fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30 the following calendar year," said Skrypak. "We have to have all of our money spent by that time, so any purchasing and mission requirements must be on the books and accounted for, otherwise, we lose that opportunity. In addition, a new law starts and a new appropriation is given to us, and we start all over."
Many people may believe closeout is just frivolous spending, but, according to Skrypak, that is a common misconception.
"The intent is to spend what Congress has approved and provided," said Skrypak. "They do not expect the money back."
CPTF also handles the fallout money that's used for unfunded requests. This year, they were ahead of the game.
"We scrub our books at the Air Force and major command levels," said Skrypak. "They filter down money that they don't necessarily need to the lower levels, such as the wings, to allow them to execute a little bit more than what they were able to do before. This is where we see the ramp up to spend money on critical things we need. It takes a joint effort, like a strong acquisition community, to acquire these things. It's a joint effort between the contracting and comptroller flights and all the resource advisors around the wing to make this happen."
This year, Skrypak and his team quickly reached out to each unit before closeout and fallout to get their unfunded requests. Once wing leadership racked and stacked them, they were ready to go in case more money filtered down.
"You have to be ready. You can't be left on the starting blocks when the gun goes off," said Skrypak. "We did a great job liasing with USAFE Financial Management and getting our unfunded requests paid."
Because the base was prepared, they were able to get an additional $800K from USAFE.
"We were ready, so we received the benefits," said Skrypak. "Command post was able to purchase a new command and control system, the civil engineer squadron got fire fighting equipment, and the operations support squadron was able to purchase crash and recovery equipment."
During the ceremony in which he took command of the 65th CPTS in June 2012, Skypak left the podium with one mantra that put the finance office into perspective: "No money, no mission."
"If there was no money, we wouldn't be able to fund the things we do at Lajes that make up our mission, such as servicing the aircraft that land here," said Skrypak. "They make their missions happen, and we fund the unit that makes it happen."
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