HOUSE DOWN ON DEVO

[Aimee Houghton <aimeeh@igc.org>]

From: Aimee Houghton <aimeeh@igc.org>

HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE DOESN'T LIKE DEVOLVEMENT

Previously we reported that the House Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee 
gave devolvement the thumbs-down. The full House Appropriations Committee 
apparently concurred. The sub-committee language was preserved and 
appears below. 

"In the fiscal year 1997 budget requested, 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 implementating the relative risk 
approach, the Department of Defense has made significant advances in 
developing an 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 agendas on an otherwise 
objective system will serve to benefit the Department or improve the 
environmental restoration program. Therefore, the Committee recommends 
retaining a centralized defense environmental restoration."

Aimee Houghton