HOUSE APS DOWN ON DEVO

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE DOWN ON DEVOLVEMENT
The House Appropriations Committee, in its report on the Fiscal Year 
1997 Defense Appropriations Bill, has accepted the President's request 
for Environmental Restoration - $1,333,016,000 - but it has given a 
thumbs down to the Defense Department's proposed devolvement of the 
Defense Environmental Restoration Account:
"In the fiscal year 1997 budget request, the Department proposed 
devolving the currently centralized defense environmental restoration 
account (DERA) and establishing accounts for each of the military 
services. The Committee has serious reservations about this approach. 
While there are standards that each service must meet in executing 
these accounts, the Committee believes that each service's view of its 
own financial exigencies will eventually influence the priorities, and 
the level of funding in this account. In implementing the relative risk 
approach, the Department of Defense has made significant advances in 
developing the analytic framework for assessing the funding priorities 
for environmental restoration. The Committee strongly supports this 
method for assessing funding priorities. However, the Committee does 
not believe that superimposing the service's agenda on an otherwise 
objective system will serve to benefit the Department or improve the 
environmental restoration program. Therefore, the Committee recommends 
retaining a centralized environmental restoration account."