Coast Guard May Shut Offices, Cut Anti-Drug Effort

The Coast Guard said Tuesday that budget problems may force it to close nearly 30 installations around the nation and reduce its war-on-drugs effort by about 55%.

“We’ve got a $100-million problem,” Adm. Paul A. Yost Jr., the Coast Guard commandant, said at a congressional briefing.

Yost and other officers from the Transportation Department agency said the cutbacks may be necessary because Congress gave the Coast Guard $105 million less than it needs for fiscal 1988, which began Oct. 1.

Operating Money

They said that unless Congress gives the agency more operating money, about 1,055 uniformed Coast Guard personnel will be let go by the end of the year, accompanied by still more layoffs and closings.

Yost said money needed by the Coast Guard was diverted by Congress to help subsidize the cost of tickets on urban mass transit systems and Amtrak, the federally owned passenger railroad.

Capt. Mike Murtagh, the Coast Guard’s budget officer, estimated that patrols to prevent illegal drugs from entering the country could drop by 55%.

Routine Patrols

Officials said routine patrols by aircraft and boats last year accounted for about 90% of the Coast Guard’s drug seizures, which netted 1.05 million pounds of marijuana and 8,464 pounds of cocaine.

Facing closure are nine Coast Guard stations whose main responsibility is conducting search-and-rescue missions for boaters.

Yost said the stations are the “lowest-use” facilities but “that doesn’t mean they don’t save lives . . . or interdict drugs.”