03-27-2004
From the Editor:
Will They Destroy the Base by Reorganizing It?
By Ed Offley
What in the world is the U.S. Army Reserve Command doing to Fort Hunter Liggett in California?
That?s the anguished question being raised by career employees at the base, as well as senior military commanders from other services who rely on the 165,000-acre reservation for pre-combat training and certification.
In emails and phone conversations with DefenseWatch, senior civilian officials at Hunter Liggett charge that its parent command is ?decimating? the already-undermanned support staff through a regional reorganization plan that is quietly transferring people and job positions away to two other bases ? neither of which have Hunter Liggett?s vital resources that allow combined-arms exercises, live-fire drills and even close air support.
?The core competencies that allow [FHL] to remain one of the nation?s premier training grounds are being decimated as you read this ? ? wrote Ramon Diaz, a career range safety official and union shop steward, in a letter to a local congressman four weeks ago. ?As the workforce and community at Fort Hunter Liggett sit in the dark, the ability to manage this great resource is being disassembled.?
Currently the eighth-largest Army maneuver training base, Fort Hunter Liggett for years was an adjunct maneuver training facility to Fort Ord, Calif., home of the 7th Infantry Division. But after the 1991 round of base closure hearings ? which decided to close Ord ? the Army deactivated the 7th ID and transferred ?FHL? to the U.S. Army Reserve Command at Fort McPherson, Ga., for use as a primary training site for reservists and National Guardsmen.
The base last year trained over 15,000 soldiers, Navy Seabees, Marines, Air Force personnel and Special Operations Command troopers, including units destined for service in Iraq and Afghanistan such as elements of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, said Lonnie Sanson, another career FHL official and president of Local R 12-90 of the National Association of Government Employees.
Under pressure to cut operating costs, FHL and dozens of other bases in the late 1990s went through a congressionally mandated ?Commercial Activity Study? (or A-76 study) to assess whether it would be more efficient and cheaper to outsource to private contractors staff functions held by career civilian employees. FHL employees ?won? the CAS last October when their detailed plan for a ?Residual Organization? came in at a lower budget than any of the competing civilian applicants.
Then came the news from the base?s superior headquarters at Fort McCoy, Wisc.: Under a proposed ?West Coast Strategic Plan? (WCSP), the Army Reserve Command intends to consolidate FHL and two other reserve bases in California ? Camp Parks in Livermore and Moffett Federal Airfield Housing in the south San Francisco Bay area ? into a single installation management plan where Camp Parks would serve as the ?West Coast Garrison? in charge of all three. On paper, such a concept appears logical, given the pressure the Army is under to squeeze every dollar out of its Operations and Maintenance budget.
Army Reserve spokeswoman Linda Fournier said in a response from queries from DefenseWatch: ?Fort Hunter Liggett, Parks Reserve Forces Training Area, Moffett
Field Army Housing Area and the BT Collins Support Center are being consolidated into one organization to eliminate competition among the training areas, provide services to all California properties not currently provided and to maximize efficiency and streamline command and control.?
However, the FHL officials, as well as several military commanders who rely on FHL for field training, argue the reorganization doesn?t make sense and threatens the military effectiveness of the base. According to Diaz and Sanson, under the WCSP plan:
* The installation, which will be downgraded from an Army Reserve base to a ?training site,? now comes under the command of a lieutenant colonel and his staff at Camp Parks, located 250 miles north of FNL in the city of Livermore.
* The Range Safety office, Range Scheduling Section and Environmental Office have also transferred to Camp Park from the base.
* Between 30-35 job positions have been or are in the process of transferring away from FHL either to Camp Parks or other bases, effectively reducing the base staff by that amount.
* The rest of almost 100 fulltime employees face either layoffs or substantial reductions in civil service (GS) rank and salary for doing the same jobs.
USARC spokeswoman Fournier confirmed that ?All available documented [job] authorizations from all West Coast sub-installations have been reinvested into the
West Coast Garrison (Camp Parks).
?Master range scheduling will occur at the West Coast Garrison while pinpoint scheduling and firing operations will remain at both training sites,? Fournier said in a statement to DefenseWatch. ?New automated hardware and software allows this function to be consolidated at one location to maximize usage and eliminate conflicting priorities. Safety, Range Safety, Environmental and uniformed schedulers
remain at Fort Hunter Liggett.?
The two civilian FHL officials described the latter change in starkly negative terms. Diaz complained bitterly that the new civilian official at Camp Parks in charge of Range Safety issues at FHL ?has no training and doesn?t even know what our land looks like. They don?t have the computer program [for assessing range safety issues] and no nothing about real military training.?
?The betrayal is this,? Sanson said, paraphrasing what Army Reserve officials told the FHL staff several months ago. ?We did the best we could [with the A-76 review], and when the time came they [Army Reserve officials] said, ?This is what you are going to have. Since you are going to do so well, we?ll cut your pay in half.? ?
Objections to the plan have not been limited to the FHL employees who face personal economic hardship from the reorganization.
Maj. Gen. Jon R. Root, commanding general of the USAR?s 104th Division (Training) at Vancouver Barracks, Wash., last year wrote the Army Reserve Command headquarters objecting to the proposed changes at FHL. Root noted that ?customer units ? were not consulted regarding this plan.?
?Though I fully understand the need for fiscal constraint ? I believe that the loss of separate and distinct command and control of these two very different USAR properties [FHL and Parks] will substantially degrade the quality of support necessary for quality training for the Army Reserve and National Guard ?. There is no other training area in [the western United States] that offers the type and extent of terrain, as well as infrastructure that FHL offers,? Root explained.
Root added that the minimal savings from eradicating ?one lt. colonel and one CSM billet? would come at the expense the ?rapid degradation? of FHL?s overall capabilities.
Rear Adm. C.R. Kubic, commander of the First Naval Construction Division, also protested to the proposed reorganization. Writing last May to Army Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. James R. Helmsley, Kubic noted that over 5,000 Seabees train annually at FHL, demonstrating an ?historical relationship? between the two military branches that is being put in jeopardy by the plan.
Kubic cited both safety and environmental protection concerns in the WCSP plan:
?The proposed loss of the FHL Commanding Officer will make establishment and enforcement of clear priorities for training support more difficult, especially when multiple units are conducting training concurrently.?
?The proposed loss of the on-site training support and scheduling cell integrated with Range Control will adversely impact the ability to schedule and conduct coordinated training, conduct area specific environmental de-confliction with training objectives, and coordinate air operations and use of [the base] airfield.?
?The proposed loss of the FHL environmental staff could result in failure to meet required federal environmental laws and could jeopardize the use of FHL training areas for all military training. ? ?
?The potential loss of the FHL Safety Office will degrade the ability to have an independent safety review that anticipates potential hazards resulting from multiple unit training exercises, and removes a key safety investigation capability required by Army Safety regulations. ? ?
So why is this seemingly counterproductive reorganization proceeding? (Most of the job slot relocations have already occurred and the Army Reserve is expected to announce the RIFs at FHL next week.)
Sanson and Diaz said they and other FHL employees have never been given a clear answer, but they have a theory: Because Camp Parks is a small classroom training facility located in an urban area, the USAR chain of command feared that it would be vulnerable to closure in next year?s Base Realignment and Closure hearings. Realigning and transferring FHL employees to a consolidated command group there is a tactic to increase the Livermore facility?s ?military value,? the key criterion in the BRAC process for evaluating which base stays open and which one closes.
The Pentagon reportedly wants the 3005 BRAC round to shut down between 23-25 percent of the 425 existing military bases in the United States, citing excess infrastructure costs. That has set state and local governments scrambling to lobby against their facilities being among the 97-106 bases that will likely end up on the closure list.
The other strand of the theory involves competition between two different Installation Management Agencies (IMA) within the U.S. Army Reserve command. For years, FHL has come under the Northwest Division IMA at Fort McCoy, but under the WSCP plan will transfer to the Southwest Division IMA at Fort Sam Houston, Tex.
The two union officials said some, if not all, of the job position losses at Hunter Liggett seem to constitute efforts by McCoy officials to retain them elsewhere in its TOE before transferring the base to the other management agency.
The real question, Sanson said, has gone unanswered since the WCSP plan was announced: ?What does this [degradation of Hunter Liggett] do to our national security??
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at
dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to
dwfeedback@yahoo.com. ? 2004 Ed Offley.
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Ellie