Re: Employment and Training

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

LOCAL HIRING PREFERENCE IN BASE CLOSURE WORK

 In the Fiscal Year 1995 Defense Authorization Act, approved by
Congress and signed by President Clinton in September, Congresswoman
Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) won passage of an amendment creating a
hiring preference for local residents in cleanup and construction work
related to base closure.
 Before passage, Pelosi said, "Because of the way current contracts
are structured, and because of the current bidding regulations governing
federal contract awards, there is no provision for bids to currently favor
hiring locals most affected by a base closure. Instead, there are many
reported situations where an out-of-state company brings in out-of-state
workers to do cleanup work at a base while unemployed workers stand
outside the gate and watch. At Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in my district,
over $30 million has been spent on environmental remediation - with not
one local resident being hired - despite the presence of qualified workers in
the vicinity. My amendment would change this by providing a preference in
contract awards to companies which plan to hire local residents. It would
envourage bidding companies to compete for having the best local hiring
plan to score higher in the bid award process."
 The Pelosi amendment reads, in part, "In entering into contracts
with private entities for services to be peformed at a military installation
that
is affected by closure or realignment under a base closure law, the Secretary
of Defense may give preference, consistent with Federal, State, and local
laws and regulations, to entities that plan to hire, to the maximum extent
practicable, residents of the vicinity of such military installation to perform
such contracts."
 Pelosi's office and the Navy engineers responsible for the Hunters
Point cleanup believe that this language is strong enough to ensure local
hiring there, but there is a risk that the Defense Department, in defining
"vicinity," will cast too wide a net. This year, in implementing similar
language providing for local subcontracting, the Defense Department (in its
interim and proposed rule) defined "vicinity' as the County containing the
installation as well as adjacent counties. In San Francisco, that means nearly
three million people. Most parties, agree, however, that "vicinity," for the
Hunters Point shipyard, should refer to the neighborhood that roughly
corresponds to the zip code in which the shipyard is located.