REDUCTION OF BUFFALO DISTRICT Mr. PILLION. As you know, we made a protest there about the transfer of some of the personnel and some of the functions from Buffalo to the Detroit district. Will it be necessary, if the Corps of Engineers decides to limit those changes, or to reduce those changes-would it be necessary to obtain approval by the Secretary of Defense, or is that possible within the Corps of Engineers? General CASSIDY. At least by the Secretary of the Army, sir. General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. There is a feeling in Buffalo that the proposed transfers of functions and personnel from Buffalo to Detroit might be the beginning of a serious downgrading of the Buffalo office, which has been operating, we thought, fairly efficiently as a unit and as one entity. When you say you will transfer some of the personnel or functions to Detroit and then provide support out of Detroit, does not that mean you are providing personnel from the Detroit office for the same work that was being done in Buffalo? General CASSIDY. The idea would be that a smaller number of people in Detroit could do the personnel work for both districts. By combining we would have a total engaged in personnel work which would be less than we would have in each district. Mr. PILLION. That might be true. That also applies to the work of the Comptroller. General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. You may have less people, and I suppose you might say two or three or five persons, in the proposed relocation as between Detroit and Buffalo. But, are there some disadvantages, let us say, in splitting the work of the comptroller into two districts rather than having the Comptroller and the accounting done in one? Would there not be some disadvantages in splitting that? For instance, when you have a personnel problem in Buffalo, is it not more economical and more efficient to handle that right in the Buffalo office rather than to telephone or make inquiries at Detroit about that matter? General CASSIDY. The people we are talking about are generally those people concerned with handling records, and payrolls, and things of that sort. Distance does add more difficulties to the problem, yes. But we are faced with a lesser workload and fewer numbers of people to handle, and the attempt here is to reduce costs, perhaps at some sacrifice of efficiency in these particular fields. Mr. PILLION. That exactly is the point that I was trying to make. If the Chief of Engineers in Buffalo has 2 or 3 or 50 projects going, and he has contracts out and wants to know how close he is to his limit of appropriations, whatever it may be, is it not better for him to have all of that information at his fingertips in Buffalo rather than having to go through the Detroit office in regard to that matter? The Detroit office is another district office, isn't it? General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. But you are operating then under your new plan from a different district office. If all of these matters were consolidated in a regional office where Detroit and Buffalo had their work done in a higher regional office, I could understand a consolidation of 70856 0-61-pt. 1—5 that kind, but to split what is essentially a function of one district unit into another district unit just does not appear to me to be the type of consolidation or reorganization that would give the maximum of efficiency for both districts, even though you may save a little bit of money, because you may lose it at the other end. So just saving the cost of one or two jobs, or three or four jobs, may very well be offset by a lack of immediate information on the part of the district engineer in Buffalo. I just ask this question. As I understand it, the total amount of work in the Buffalo district is on the increase. Is that right? General CASSIDY. It will be on the increase. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. In the future? General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. As I understand it also, the total amount of work in the Detroit office is decreasing over let us say the next 3 or 4 years. Would that be about a reasonable assumption? General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. In the long run. Mr. PILLION. So that if there were any consolidations, that is, due to the increase in the Buffalo work and the decrease in the Detroit work, it would seem to me it should work the other way. Instead of decreasing Buffalo and shifting it over to Detroit, maybe it ought to be the other way around. General CASSIDY. This was considered in considering the area of the Great Lakes. As we completed our programs in that area and complete the deepening of the harbors, I believe some consideration was given to the fact that Detroit is a little more centrally located with respect to the three lakes than is Buffalo out on the end of its lake. Mr. PILLION. As I understand it, the Buffalo district runs from roughly Sandusky, or Toledo, way on up into Massena and up in northern New York. General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. That is a pretty long distance from Detroit, is it not? General CASSIDY. Landwise it is, sir. Mr. EVINS. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. PILLION. Surely. Mr. EVINS. If the Corps is trying to locate their offices on a central basis, then Nashville is more centrally located than either Louisville or Mobile. They are whittling away at Nashville and ordering a transfer of a part of their services and functions to Louisville and part to Mobile. If the corps is looking for a central location in the middle of the lakes and the rivers in the South and Southeast then the location should be retained and continued at Nashville. Mr. PILLION. Of course, if the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Rabaut, and yourself, agreed on where it should go, I will go along with it. Mr. EVINS. I am not in any controversy between you and my_colleague from Michigan. I was talking about the office down in Tennessee which is being diminished. Mr. CANNON. We have here a representative of the great Detroit district to which you have referred. Mr. EVINS. I yield to my friend. Mr. RABAUT. I will say this: Some agencies of the Government, in this effort to curtail expenses, have been moved from Detroit, and some agencies of the Government have been moved to Detroit. I have not exerted my influence to move them away, nor have I exerted my influence to moving them back. I just think if we can save some money some place we should, because we have to save. Mr. CANNON. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) The gentleman from New York. Mr. TABER. I would like to suggest that perhaps the curtailment in the Tennessee area might be due to the completion of projects. How about that, General? General CASSIDY. This is correct. As far as Nashville is concerned, we have a much smaller number of projects now under construction, and we must consolidate them in Mobile. The Army projects are under the Army headquarters in Atlanta. Mobile was selected as the particular district in which to consolidate the military construction. Mr. EVINS. But not on a central basis? General CASSIDY. Central with respect to the work. Mr. EVINS. How many personnel do you propose to transfer from Tennessee to Alabama, and how many to Kentucky? You do not really mean to dismiss any personnel or let any off your payroll, but just propose to transfer them? General CASSIDY. We propose to transfer, or to place as many as possible otherwise, if they are not willing to transfer. Mr. PILLION. Mr. Chairman. Mr. CANNON. The gentleman from New York. Mr. PILLION. I would like to make clear that there is no objection whatever on the part of anyone in the Buffalo area to any needed reduction in force of personnel. Certainly no one could object to that. The objection that is being made is to a transfer of functions from one unit to another. If there are 12 people that are in surplus in Buffalo, or 20 people, certainly there is no intent on the part of anyone that I know of to retain them. But if you can take part of the functions from one district and transfer them to another, why can't you take all of the functions of the Buffalo district and transfer it to Detroit, or vice versa? And why can't you take all of the functions of Detroit and transfer them to Buffalo and wipe out the Detroit district altogether? Why is that not possible under your same theory, General? General CASSIDY. We are not contemplating closing the Buffalo district. What we propose to transfer is a service function. In other words, where in a particular area the Buffalo district would be served by personnel of the Detroit district. However, the district engineer is the boss. He is running the district and will have the key elements for control of the district, and will report directly to the division engineer. This problem of servicing from an adjacent district is not new. We have had consolidated payrolls, with one district running all the payrolls in a division for at least 5 years. In other words, one district serves the entire division. Mr. PILLION. Is that true in all of the districts in the country? General CASSIDY. All the divisions in the country. We consolidated payrolls in all the divisions. This took place about 5 or 6 years ago. Mr. PILLION. You mean Buffalo has been exceptional, General? General CASSIDY. Buffalo's payrolls come from Chicago. Mr. PILLION. From the regional office? General CASSIDY. No, sir, from the Chicago district. Our districts are operating agencies. So when we have to obtain a service for another district, it is from a district. So we consolidated all the payroll functions in the Chicago district for that division. There has been considerable objection, but it has been rocking along and working well. Mr. PILLION. We have asked for a review of that situation in the Buffalo district. Is that being reviewed, General Cassidy? General CASSIDY. We are reviewing the entire Buffalo problem. Yes, sir. Mr. PILLION. Off the record. Mr. CANNON. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) REDUCTION IN EXPENDITURES Mr. CANNON. Returning to the question before us are these reductions in expenditure connected with these reductions in personnel reflected in this budget? General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. They would be reflected. Mr. CANNON. There has been a reduction in the budget which would not have been there had you not recommended these? General CASSIDY. Most of these reductions Mr. CANNON. As far as we can see, there has been no reduction, General. General CASSIDY. There has been no reduction. That is correct. Most of the reductions in force are applied to the military. The reductions which will take place due to the servicing of one district by another are still being worked out and still taking place, and will take effect in our costs during this year, but they are not reflected in this particular budget. No, sir. It was put together last fall. Mr. CANNON. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) REVIEW OF NAVIGATION MAINTENANCE PROGRAM Mr. CANNON. On the record. It has been some time since you reviewed the entire navigation maintenance program, General, with a view to discontinuing work on projects which may no longer have economic feasibility. Whenever you do that you will find local objection of the local businessman, who does not want you to discontinue anything. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. CANNON. To get back to the point we were discussing in the record, we have not recently reviewed the entire navigation maintenance program with a view to discontinuing some of the projects which may no longer have economic feasibility. Are you planning another review in the near future for that purpose, or do you plan to go over this whole program with a view to cutting out all of the deadwood regardless of what the local community says about it, and regardless of whom it hurts in the way of local business? Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. CANNON. On the record. General CASSIDY. We have a study underway which is not exactly the type of study you contemplated. We are reexamining our harbors with a view to determining to what depths and widths we should maintain them for the existing and reasonably foreseeable traffic. This may be a lesser depth and width than was authorized by the Congress in the past. This will involve a study of economics, but we are not going into such detail that would lead us to say that this harbor is no longer economically justified. What we are trying to do is to cut down on the amount of maintenance to serve such use as the harbor now has. This study is underway. We have some 527 harbors in the United States; 372 of them can be classed as minor harbors. It is those in particular that we are looking at to see whether, instead of maintaining them to 14 feet, we can maintain them at 8 feet to save maintenance money. In that review we will run across some harbors which we no longer desire to maintain at all. In that case we will just put them in an inactive status. Mr. PILLION. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. CANNON. The gentleman from New York. STUDY OF MAXIMUM DEPTHS Mr. PILLION. Are you also studying the possibility of placing a maximum depth? We have all of these 40-foot new-type ships coming in. Is there any study being made of that? General CASSIDY. Yes, sir. That is a separate study which we have underway. What we are looking at there is what are the alternatives to deepening to meet the new ships we know are coming off the ways in the foreseeable future. Mr. PILLION. Just because an oil company, or the owner of a ship, decides that he will make more money by building a tanker that will have a draft of, let us say, 40 feet, does that mean we then have to dredge and maintain a waterway for him to the extent of 40 feet in depth? What are the economics in that? Are we studying that? General CASSIDY. In our normal survey procedures when a request is made for the deepening of a harbor we would go into the full economics and see what traffic proposed to use the harbor, and see what the economics are, and what savings would be obtained and the need to the public for deepening such harbor. This particular study is pointed at what are the alternatives to constant deepening. It is a general study rather than a specific study pointed at any particular port. Mr. PILLION. Thank you. PROGRAM OF SET-ASIDES FOR SMALL BUSINESS Mr. CANNON. General Cassidy, we are hearing a good deal now about the program of set-asides. I do not know just what a set-aside |