ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997 TAG: 9703240051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
The agency will close its regional headquarters in Texas and reduce staff in Florida and Oklahoma.
The National Weather Service said Friday it is carrying out plans to close its Southern regional headquarters in Texas and pare back staff at its hurricane center in Florida and a tornado-tracking center in Oklahoma.
The controversial moves had been repeatedly stalled by objections from members of Congress, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles and emergency management officials who contended that public safety would be jeopardized.
``They are compromising the safety of the people along our coastal areas [by] reducing the staff at the Hurricane Center,'' said Billy Wagner, director of emergency management for the Florida Keys.
Agency leaders said a $27.5 million budget shortfall was forcing them to scale back operations. They denied public safety would be harmed.
The Southern regional headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, will be closed and its duties split between regional offices in Bohemia, N.Y., and Kansas City, Mo. The Fort Worth office, with a staff of 60, now oversees operations in 10 states from New Mexico east to Florida.
The weather service said it will reduce the staff at its National Hurricane Center in Miami, and the tornado-tracking Severe Storms Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., by a handful of jobs each. Overnight staffing at both centers will be cut back to one person, except in cases of bad weather. Both centers also will be issuing fewer advisories.
The consolidation has sparked spirited debate within the top ranks of the weather service. One senior manager, National Center for Environmental Predictions chief Ron McPherson, had threatened to resign if the cutbacks went through.
McPherson could not be reached for comment Friday.
``We feel that we are implementing these cuts in a responsible fashion and doing it in a way that is not going to jeopardize the services essential to public safety,'' Terry Garcia, the acting assistant secretary for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a news conference Friday. NOAA is the weather service's parent agency.
The agency's Southern Region covers the nation's most active weather zone and includes some 1,000 field personnel in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
National Weather Service Director Elbert Friday Jr. said none of the forecasting work is done by regional staffers.
But Southern Region deputy director Bill Proenza said regional officials work closely with field offices, shifting manpower and resources around when severe weather hits.
``I can't begin to tell you how much I feel this action is unjustified,'' Proenza said of the Fort Worth closure.
``It's a sad day,'' said Troy Kimmel, chief meteorologist at KTBC in Austin. ``The National Weather Service, in my opinion, is being dismantled slowly.''
The restructuring was announced in an early-morning memo Friday to all 5,000 NWS employees.
In this year's defense appropriations bill, Congress approved language mandating that personnel reductions be made at NWS headquarters in the Washington area. An unreleased inspector general's report in 1995 concluded that 449 jobs could be pared from the agency's headquarters.
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