Defense Considering Transferring Base Ownership To Nearby Towns

Federal Times | July 1, 2002 | Chet Dembeck

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The Defense Department is considering turning over ownership of many of its military bases to neighboring cities and towns as a way of reducing the maintenance costs that go with owning them.

Under such an arrangement, a city or town near a military base would take ownership of the base and then lease the base property and infrastructure back to the military. The town or city would then be responsible for providing maintenance services for the base, buildings and other infrastructure.

Such an arrangement exists between Brooks Air Force Base and San Antonio, Texas.

Michael Jaggard, the Navy’s executive director of acquisition and business management, discussed the idea at a June 25 conference of the Senior Executives Association in Washington, D.C.

In a Feb. 27 interview with Federal Times, Raymond Dubois, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and the environment, said partnerships with the private sector would become more prevalent as the Pentagon grapples with how to manage its operations as more of its civilian work force nears retirement age.

Meanwhile, the Navy will begin outsourcing its ophthalmology services as part of the Defense Department’s initiative to divest functions not directly related to war fighting.

In a June 27 interview with Federal Times, Jaggard said the move would affect about 500 jobs.

The move is one of 10 projects being implemented throughout the military services to privatize various activities and services. Jaggard declined to discuss the other nine projects.

Jaggard said the Navy would expand the scope of its privatization efforts if all went well with its effort to switch from Navy eye doctors to private doctors for ophthalmology services.

A council of top Pentagon leaders, known as the Business Initiative Council, is fueling Defense’s move toward privatizing functions deemed not central to its warfightng mission.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created the council in July 2001 to consider ways to find cost savings and run the department more like a corporation than a bureaucracy. The council is chaired by the Pentagon’s acquistion chief, Pete Aldridge, and includes the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

The council has been very tight-lipped about which other department functions it is considering for divestiture.

Such ambitious plans have not gone unnoticed or unchallenged.

At a June 26 hearing on outsourcing before the House Armed Services subcommittee on military readiness, Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, blasted the concept.

"A senior Pentagon official insists that as federal employees retire, they will simply be replaced by contractors," Hamage said. "And contractors, despite acquiring and retaining their work with almost no public-private competition, are almost never subject to the competitive scrutiny experienced by federal employees."

Michael Wynne, principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisitions, supported the council's divestiture program, although he declined to elaborate on its details.

"It would be premature to discuss any specific DoD procedures at this time," Wynne told the subcommittee. "Success will rest with allowing each agency to develop [its] implementation based on what works best for the agency, rather than dictating a one-size-fits-all approach."