Local

2 Investigates: Ga. National Guard's $1.8M logistics contract

ATLANTA — With a $700 million budget and 15,000 members, the Georgia National Guard is a sprawling organization. Keeping track of every helicopter, Humvee and bullet is a massive undertaking at more than 60 armories throughout the state.

"Every armory has at least two individuals that are assigned to that readiness center full time," said the head of Georgia's National Guard, Adjutant Gen. Jim Butterworth.

Still, taxpayers are paying a Las Vegas company, TSI Corp., $1.8 million for that same logistics work.

Channel 2's John Bachman asked Butterworth if the contract is redundant.

"It does beg that question," Butterworth said.

The general told Bachman he is looking into the contract and others because of sequestration and budget cuts.

"The concept of outsourcing very well may be a dated relationship, dated model of doing business," Butterworth said.

In 2006, the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. started outsourcing logistics work with TSI Corp. for several state National Guard units because of large deployments.

Today, soldiers are coming home, but according to USASpending.gov, TSI Corp. had $73.5 million in logistics and other government contracts in 2012.

Channel 2 Action News wanted to know why the company still has the contract, and sent a producer and a photographer to find out.

The team found TSI Corp.'s headquarters in a small office park about 7 miles from the Las Vegas casinos.

TSI Corp.'s president, Heidi Siegel, wouldn't talk to Channel 2 Action News on camera, but she did confirm the company has 18 contract workers Georgia.

She said, with deployments, her employees help with inventory and moving equipment where it needs to be. The Channel 2 Action News producer asked Siegel where her employees live, and she said they were based out of Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.

She said she assumed they lived near there because they wouldn't want to travel that much.

Channel 2 Action News went through hundreds of pages of time sheets and expense reports from the last few months to see what the contract included.

One expense sheet from February names the destination as Marietta, but under mileage it has 262 miles. It also included four nights in a hotel and meals. The total expense was more than $1,100.

Another trip to Marietta in December cost $617 in mileage, hotel and meals -- money spent for work National Guard members in Georgia may already be doing.

"I guarantee you we can use that $1.8 million in another method," Butterworth said.