Perhaps Worst A-76 Privatization Review Ever Can Still Be Killed—With Your Help!

Senators Barbara Mikulski (MD) and Paul Sarbanes (MD) will offer an amendment to the Senate FY07 Defense Appropriations Bill when that funding measure is considered by the Senate on September 5 to kill what many observers believe to the worst OMB Circular A-76 privatization review ever.

Even if you are not directly adversely affected, please take the time to urge your Senators to support the Mikulski-Sarbanes Amendment. The feeling among contracting out experts is if the agency is able to get away with this botched and biased A-76 review, then anything is possible. So be thankful it’s not happening to you, but don’t ever forget that you could be next. Fortunately, the House of Representatives has already added the language in the Mikulski-Sarbanes Amendment to the House version of the Defense Appropriations Bill.

The victims of this A-76 privatization review are 350 older, blue-collar, overwhelmingly African-American employees of the Department of the Army, many of them veterans. In September 2004, the Army decided that these employees should continue performing base operations support services at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, DC.

However, in January 2006, the Army reversed course and decided to contract out their work.
This privatization review

1. is so expensive that the costs of conducting it are now in excess of any promised savings.
2. is so unfair to the employees that the Deputy Garrison Commander asked the affected employees’ union in writing to pay for outside counsel to appeal the January 2006 decision to contract out to the Government Accountability Office.
3. is so problematic that the Garrison Commander wanted to conduct further research and cost comparisons three months after the January 2006 decision to contract out—but was instructed not to do so by the Army.
4. has been so botched—the original solicitation was amended 16 times and the last such amendment included 1,500 changes—that the Army asked the Pentagon for permission to shut it down—but was mysteriously refused this request.
5. is so old that it actually began in the Clinton Administration, in June 2000.
6. is so clearly illegal. While it was conducted, the Defense Appropriations Bills first limited the length of A-76 reviews to 48 months and then to 30 months, in order to hold down the often significant costs of the A-76 process, which leaves the Walter Reed A-76 privatization review in clear defiance of the Anti-Deficiency Act.

A fact sheet has been attached to this article if you need additional information. If you have questions, please contact John Threlkeld in AFGE’s Legislative Department at (202) 639-6413 / threlj@afge.org.
Click here to tell your Senators by email to support the Mikulski-Sarbanes Amendment.