Let's put things into the context of when I wrote the paper. At the time, SDA was payable to anyone posted to a ship or who was in a "Designated Position." Giving SDA to anyone posted to a ship makes a lot of sense except for those select few who are posted to ships, but who never sail. We had documented cases of individuals who would get their posting messages, report on board in order to start their SDA and then immediately report to Sick Bay in order to be declared unfit sea, walk ashore and still collect SDA for the next two years. Did this happen a lot? Actually no, but it did happen (malingering is actually very rare). However, in my last ship, we had a PO1 who never actually went to sea in the entire two years I was there. What sometimes happened were cases where the medical staff, rather than increase TCATs to 12 months (which would stop SDA), would instead repeatedly issue TCATs of six months so the individual would keep their SDA (notwithstanding that they were not doing anything remotely connected to what the allowance was for). I would argue that actual malingering is/was quite rare, but it is a fact that there is/was some abuse going on.
My big target was the list of Designated Positions, which included Sea Training (surprised to hear that they are on CASSDA now) and Fleet Staffs (i.e. largely senior officers and chiefs). The issue here was that there were a fair number of personnel in Designated Positions who were not actually going to sea, at least nowhere near the number of days per year that they were supposed to (130 days/yr in 1994). It is also worth noting that one of the BIG differences between SDA and CASSDA is that time drawing SDA is accumulative toward higher rates, whereas time drawing CASSDA is not. In other words, CASSDA gives you money, but nothing else in the long run, so everyone wants to be on SDA if at all possible (another reason I'm surprised STS is apparently now on CASSDA). The fight to get on that list of Designated Positions was pretty intense and trying to remove a position from the List was tantamount to chopping off somebody's arm they way some folks reacted. It was also very difficult to get a new deserving position on the list.
Another important thing to remember is that all of the environmental allowances were set up in an era when we did all of our bookkeeping by hand and paying a monthly allowance was much simpler than paying one out daily. Field Operations Allowance (FOA) was an exception to this. The casual allowances were designed for sporadic payments in small increments. Otherwise, the norm was to pay environmental allowances monthly (except FOA). Modern electronic accounting methods eliminate this concern and the payment of daily allowance is well within the realm of the possible. For that matter, if we can track every hour that aircrew spend in the air (and have been since people started flying), surely we can track the number of days people spend at sea (would make the whole SSI thing a lot easier too).
Another thing to note is that in accordance with Treasury Board instruction, in order for SDA to paid to a unit, that unit was supposed to be spending a minimum of 130 days per year at sea. Likewise, a Designated Position was one that was supposed to be spending a minimum of 130 days per year at sea. I believe this number has been reduced to 90 days, but I'm not sure.
My proposal was to simplify the whole business and only have one allowance for sea duty and to pay it only for days actually spent at sea in the same way as we were paying FOA at the time. (I'll point out here that we actually went the opposite direction and replaced FOA with LDA, which is modelled on SDA.) Now before everybody howls and accuses me of stealing money from sailors, know that I did not propose simply paying CASSDA (which was a fixed rate) by another name. Instead, I proposed an incremental allowance, ranging from about $6.00 to $45.00 per day depending on one's accumulated sea-time (i.e using a point system). I also proposed removing the cap that currently exists on CASSDA (i.e. no maximum amount per month). My rates were based on the SDA rates at the time. Using the same calculation method today, the rates would be from $41.00 to $104.00 per day. The benefits to this were as follows:
1) Eliminates people receiving or accusations of of people receiving an allowance they didn't earn. In order to get it, you have to go to sea - period.
2) Eliminates the administration of the list of Designated Positions.
3) Puts MORE money in the pockets of the folks who are actually earning it. Consider this: Right now, a sailor posted to a ship that isn't sailing much (e.g. spends 50 days at sea this year) draws the same amount of SDA as the poor sap who is constantly being attach posted from ship to ship and spends 300 days at sea this year. Where's the fairness in that?
In summary, my proposal was to make the system more fair and redistribute the money to those who were actually earning it.
No, I think we can do this much better and LDA was the wrong way to go...
