
DATE: Tuesday, November 11, 1997            TAG: 9711110262

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   91 lines

PENTAGON PLANS TO TRIM 30,000 JOBS FROM BUREAUCRACY

The U.S. military will trim what may be the world's largest bureaucracy by about 30,000 people over the next five years, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said Monday, but will do so without cutting the number of Americans in uniform.

Cohen unveiled a plan to save about $6 billion annually, much of which he hopes to redirect to the purchase of new weaponry, by streamlining the Pentagon's administration and by closing more military bases.

Almost half of the projected savings would come from the latter step, which Congress emphatically refused to take when Cohen and President Clinton suggested it earlier this year. Cohen promised Monday to continue lobbying for permission to shut more bases, suggesting one set of new closings in 2001 and another in 2005.

All four Hampton Roads members of the House of Representatives have vowed to oppose additional base closings, at least until the Pentagon makes a more convincing case that past closings have actually saved money. Virginia's two senators were among the handful who supported Cohen's call for more closings earlier this year.

Hampton Roads has the nation's largest concentration of military facilities. The region lost major installations in the 1991 and '93 rounds of base closings but gained several thousand new jobs from the 1995 round with the transfer of F/A-18 Hornet squadrons from Cecil Field, near Jacksonville, to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

Most of the job cuts Cohen has in mind apparently will be felt in the Washington area, though officials Monday had no geographic or agency-by-agency breakdown of the reductions.

Cohen said he plans to cut his own staff of 3,000 by one-third and will trim about 31,000 jobs from the 15 defense agencies and nine field activities that report to his office. Most of those operations, including the Defense Commissary Agency, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and the Defense Logistics Agency, are centered in Washington but have employees scattered across the country or in some cases worldwide.

The planned cuts also include about 2,000 civilian and military positions now assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to regional military commands like the Norfolk-based U.S. Atlantic Command. Those regional commands could gain other positions, however, with the transfer of jobs now assigned to the joint chiefs.

The job cuts and other reorganization moves designed to make the Defense Department function more like a private business were outlined in a report titled ``Defense Reform Initiative.'' A task force appointed by Cohen spent six months developing the program.

Vice President Al Gore, who joined Cohen in releasing the document during a Pentagon news conference, called it ``an extraordinarily well-put-together plan.''

While praising the report, Gore also used its release to answer Republican charges that the Clinton administration's budgets have shortchanged defense needs. ``We have all the money we need . . . but we're spending too much of our defense budget on the wrong stuff,'' he said.

Gore said the report recognizes that ``big, all-powerful, all-knowing headquarters are a thing of the past'' and praised Cohen for reassigning a variety of agencies that now report to the Defense secretary to the various military departments.

Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre said he hopes all the job cuts outlined in the report will be carried out without layoffs. Many of the 3,000 positions to be cut from the field activities will be reassigned to the defense agencies, for example.

Cohen also directed a 10 percent cut in the headquarters staffs of the three military departments: Army, Navy and Air Force.

In addition to the jobs he plans to eliminate outright, Cohen said he intends to let privately owned companies compete for the work now done by about 30,000 Defense Department employees. Those ``commercial activities'' include maintenance of military facilities, data processing, social services and medical services.

In past such competitions, civilian companies have won about one-half of the contracts at stake. But even when government workers retained the contracts, competition drove their agencies to reduce costs, the Pentagon contends.

The report also outlines a number of steps to reduce the Pentagon's use of paper. By the year 2000, for example, the Pentagon plans to eliminate paper from its contracting process for major weapons systems, letting contractors submit their bid proposals electronically. MEMO: Copies of the Defense Reform Initiative are available on the

Internet at the Pentagon's World Wide Web site: www.defenselink.

mil/pubs/dodreform ILLUSTRATION: COHEN'S PLAN FOR CUTS

Personnel: Most of the 30,000 job cuts Defense Secretary William

Cohen has in mind apparently will be felt in the Washington area.

Facilities: Cohen wants to close more bases, a step Congress has

refused to take. Hampton Roads, which has the nation's largest

concentration of military facilities, lost major installations in

the 1991 and '93 rounds of base closings.