Oral History Program Rob Bishop Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 13 November 2020 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Rob Bishop Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 13 November 2020 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Hill/DDO ‘95 Oral history Project documents the 1995 and 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and its impact on Utah. In 1993, rumors started to circulate that Hill Air Force Base and Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) would be closed by the 1995 round of BRAC, causing state officials, local government, and local grassroots lobbying group, Hill/DDO’95, to spring into action to save Utah’s military installations from closure or realignment to other facilities. This project includes interviews from a wide range of players, from congressmen, state officials, members of Hill/DDO’95, and the civilian employees of Hill Air Force Base and (DDO). Their accounts describe the process of fighting for the base, the closure of DDO, the formation of the Utah Defense Alliance (UDA) and Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) from the Hill/DDO’95 group, and their fight to save Hill Air Force Base all over again in 2005. Also discussed is the importance of the F-35 aircraft and the “Falcon Hill” Enhanced Use Lease project to the prosperity of Hill Air Force Base and military relations in Utah. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bishop, Rob, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 13 November 2020, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Rob Bishop. It was conducted on November 13, 2020, at Weber State University and concerns the BRAC rounds of 1995 and 2005 and the significance of Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Bishop speaks about his time in the Utah State Legislature and the beginning of its involvement with Hill Air Force Base. Bishop also shares his experiences with BRAC 2005, as well as a number of related issues, such as: the Dugway Proving Ground issue, the Goshute Nuclear issue, the Sage Grouse issue, and bringing F-35s to Hill Air Force Base. The interviewer is Sarah Langsdon. Also in the room is Alyssa Kammerman, Ben Zack, Taylor Knuth, and Travis Campbell. SL: Okay, this is Sarah Langsdon and I’m here interviewing Representative Rob Bishop. Also in the room is Alyssa Kammerman, Travis Campbell, Taylor Knuth, and Ben Zack. Today is November 13, 2020. Today we are going to talk to Representative Bishop about Hill Air Force Base and the BRAC in 1995 and then 2005 and forward. First of all, thank you so much, Representative Bishop, for coming and talking to us a little bit about this. My first question for you, we’re going to go back because I didn’t think about your legislature days, I skipped right to congress. So, when did you first run for state legislature? RB: It was 1978. SL: 1978, okay. Were you elected that first year? RB: Yes. SL: So, as you were serving in the state legislature, was Hill Air Force Base on the radar of legislators, or not so much? RB: No, Hill Air Force Base was always considered a federal project. It wasn’t in our 1 purview, so the legislature had very little contact with it. It was only in the late 1980s, early 1990s, when I was Majority Leader and Speaker of the House, that we had some members of the legislature who actually worked on the base. That’s when we started to realize that it would help both the state, as the economic engine that Hill Air Force Base always was, but it could also help the Base with some cooperation with the legislature. So actually, the first time we took a bunch of legislators to tour Hill Air Force Base, it was Representative Blake Chard who worked on the Base at the time, and he was the one who coordinated everything and was a catalyst for starting that process. Since that time the legislature has taken a much greater interest in what happens at Hill Air Force Base and especially what happens around Hill Air Force Base to maintain its viability. That was fun, but before that time there was really a hands-off approach with the Base. SL: Okay, so did you become involved in the Base when BRAC was coming around in ‘95? Did the legislature become involved, or did they still take a step back? RB: Yes and no. The involvement grew as time has gone, and in later BRAC rounds the involvement of the state and the legislature became bigger and more specific. Actually, I had left the legislature by 1995 anyway. SL: Oh, did you? Okay. So, when did you decide to run for Congress? RB: It was when Jim Hansen announced his retirement. That would have been the 2002 election. SL: 2002. So, you ran in 2002— RB: Yes. 2 SL: —And were elected, so you went to DC in 2003, correct? RB: That’s right. SL: Okay. What advice, if any, did Jim Hansen give you? RB: Really very little, and it was not intentional. It’s one of those things that I kind of followed in his footsteps. His first term in the legislature I was a legislative intern, and my first legislative term he was Speaker of the House. I knew him very well. I knew his positions. He didn’t need to tell me a lot. We actually were in sync as far as what we thought was important, what we thought needed to be there. So, it wasn’t that he needed to do a lot of training or input. I had experience in the legislature, I had experience in the government process, I knew what the issues were. I had worked in the party as well as lobbying on these issues. I knew what I was doing and he knew I was doing the same thing he would have done. SL: Okay. Did you talk to him at all about his involvement in Hill? Especially with the BRAC ‘95, he was instrumental in that. RB: Yes, with specific issues—I think we’ll talk about like the Goshute issue later—I picked up from him what we were doing, so he gave me specific advice on some of those things he had started, and we were able to pick up on those initiatives and then take them through to conclusion. It also helped that I had several of his staffers with me. I kept Justin Harding from his staff, and he was doing all the land issues, which was helpful. I had the opportunity of keeping Steve Peterson, who had been doing his defense work in Utah and DC, as well as some of his land issues. So, there was that continuity through his staff that was there with me. 3 SL: Okay, great. What congressional committees have you been on? RB: Far too many. With the exception of two years, I was on the Natural Resources Committee, that’s where I was chairman of the Public Lands Sub-committee, and then eventually chairman of the full committee. With the exception of four years, I was on the Armed Services Committee. For eight years, and that was one reason I had to go off those two other committees for a while, I was also on the Rules Committee. I also spent four years on the Education and Labor Committee, which was murder, and two years on the Science Committee, which was a mistake, but that was my first two years. I also spent six years as the chairman of the Page Board, which was also an assignment at the time. SL: Okay. So, when you were on the House Armed Service Committee, were decisions about Hill or other bases coming through that? RB: Definitely, so I was able to start on that. When I first went to the Rules Committee, it was an exclusive committee. One could not serve on anything else, so I had to leave the two other committees I had. I took a “leave of absence” from Armed Services, so I could reclaim my seat whenever I left Rules. When I left Rules, and when they changed it so Rules was no longer exclusive, I was able to keep my position on the Armed Services Committee. I was always on the Readiness Subcommittee or the Tactical Subcommittee, so I was always on subcommittees that had a direct impact on Hill Air Force Base decisions. SL: So, were you involved with the BRAC 2005? RB: Much. Very definitely. SL: You want to talk a little about that? 4 RB: BRAC 2005 was painful. I actually think Hill was in greater jeopardy in the ‘93 and the ‘95 closure rounds, because those became very political, and that’s where I was grateful that Jim Hansen was in Congress. He was a dynamo in defense of Hill Air Force Base. In ’05, we were very nervous about what would happen, again from those experiences that had happened earlier. We were very anxious to try and keep it so it wasn’t going to be politicized, which it had been earlier, and keep it strictly to the merits of the bases. Actually, that was one thing I can say that was the driving factor of my first two or three years in Congress: how to make sure Hill was BRAC-proof. In fact, I remember the Deseret News wrote an editorial that said what happens to Hill Air Force Base will be an indication of my political abilities. I thought, “Thanks a lot.” But what happened in BRAC was extremely significant, and our decisions were with an eye to potential impact on the BRAC process. I’ll give you an illustration if I could? This is one that wasn’t on the list of questions: Dugway Proving Ground in Tooele. It’s Army, so it normally wouldn’t be connected with the Hill Air Force Base, but there was a landing strip—Michael Army Airfield—and it’s a landing strip out on the Utah Test and Training Range at Dugway Proving Grounds. It was used for emergency landing for everything that flies around the Utah Test and Training Range. The Army was rebuilding the runway, which actually was originally built to be long enough for a space shuttle to land on it, which is why there were all sorts of crazy rumors about flying saucers and everything else landing there. 5 While they were rebuilding the main airstrip, they would first build an emergency taxi/landing strip. In typical Washington fashion, they appropriated the money and then sat on it for several years as the price of asphalt went up, so by the time they were ready to actually do the emergency taxi/runway that they could use while they were redoing the main runway, there wasn’t enough money for the entire emergency taxi/landing strip. They were going to build it 2,000 feet too short because that was all the money they had. They were just going to build as much as they could, but an F-16 could not land on it. I went out there as one of my first site visits after having been elected and they showed me the situation. I realized this was a catastrophe waiting to happen. There are not a lot of emergency landings out there, but every year two to four happened, and those planes are expensive. It makes a difference, not only for the plane but also for the lives of the pilots. I thought, “How can we solve this problem?” The House and the Senate had already passed the appropriations bill, so there was nothing I could add on to it. Everyone told me I was stuck, there wasn’t anything I could do, but I also realized that I still had friends in the Utah legislature. This is why maybe that relationship we’d built earlier came into play. The State had a lot of one-time money sitting around that they would be spending in this next session. I went to the Utah Legislature and said, “Can we get two million dollars to give to the military to expand that runway so it can be used?” The rationale for doing that was that everyone talks the talk about defending and supporting the military. Utah would have the chance of actually 6 proving we could back it up with two million dollars of one-time appropriations so they could actually do a runway that could handle any Hill Air Force Base aircraft that would be landing out there. We did it. The Legislature simply did this as an effort to prove how important Hill Air Force Base was and how military-conscious the Utah Legislature was. Getting money from them was relatively easy. The hard part was getting it transferred to the federal government, because no one had ever tried that before. The federal government is really good about taking money; not so good about receiving. There was a supplemental appropriations bill going through Congress which I thought would be ideal to add this to it, but as I talked to everybody in the House, they wanted to have a clean bill with no riders. So, starting with the Chair of the sub-committee that appropriates, then the Chair of the full-committee, then majority leadership, and finally the Speaker of the House, I explained the situation, that we had this money, and what I needed. They all said, “It’s a brilliant idea. That’s very creative. It’s really good. We’ll find something for you, but we’re not going to put it on this bill.” I was heartbroken. I went over to the Senate, and this is the only time in my life I ever saw the Senate actually be effective. I went to Senator Bob Bennett and explained the situation. We walked down to the Senate floor where Ted Stevens of Alaska was running the supplemental appropriations bill and started telling Ted what was happening. Stevens stopped us and said, “You mean, you’re trying to give us money?” I said, “Yes.” 7 “Well, fine.” So, he took my language and he went over to the clerk and added it to the bill in the Senate right then and there. When the bill got back to the House, since we’d spent all this time telling everyone about it, no one asked questions. They just accepted it. The bottom line is because of the State Legislature as well as the State Administration—they had to pull some strings to get the money authorized at the right time so it was usable—we had actually built that runway. No other state showed that kind of commitment to the military! There were several emergency landings on the taxiway, and I was really proud of that taxiway because everyone told me I couldn’t do it. We thought outside the box, and with the help of the State Legislature, we actually got it done. The State Legislature was bound and determined, because we were going into the BRAC round, and they wanted to show the state of Utah would actually step up and do more than just say, “We’re really behind you guys.” SL: Okay, very interesting. So, can you talk a little bit about the Goshute issue, where they were trying to bring nuclear waste to Skull Valley, and that impact on the testing range and Hill Air Force Base? RB: Once again, all BRAC-driven as to the approach. So, it’s, like everything else, complicated. It goes back to the fact that the federal government had determined that they would use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the dumping site of all nuclear waste that’s created back East, which to me as a Westerner is insulting, as it was to every Nevadan. The fact is that the Nevada delegation—people give credit to Harry Reid, but it was the entire Nevada delegation working on it—had basically stalled the Yucca Mountain Project so it wasn’t going to happen. 8 The Private Fuel Storage, PFS, is basically a mid-west consortium of companies creating nuclear waste and wanting to find a place out of their home states to dump it. They had the same idea of those who decided Yucca Mountain was a good storage idea: “No one lives in the West, let’s dump it out there.” Fortunately, a federal law prohibited it. The law that prohibited it was passed trying to force everyone to go to Yucca, and prohibited anywhere else. Indian reservations were not considered under the same standard. They were not covered in the federal prohibition. They had their own sovereignty. So, the Goshutes—or at least in this case half of the Goshutes, because half of them didn’t want it, half did—were promised a lot of money, in excess of 100 billion dollars, if they would take these nuclear spent fuel rods and then set them above ground on their reservation, which is in Skull Valley. Now, the problem was it is right next to the bombing range, the Utah Test and Training Range. In and of itself, a nuclear dump next to a bombing range doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was even worse because this was the entrance and exit for all planes flying from Hill Air Force Base into the bombing range. They would fly over it. Even though I had great confidence the Air Force could safely fly over a nuclear dump, there would be protests by somebody; some group would put pressure on the Air Force not to fly that way. In that case, it would minimize the ability of Hill Air Force Base to actually be the manager of the range. It would limit the range’s scope, and potentially harm Hill Air Force Base during a BRAC round. We had to try and figure out something. I did not 9 want to have anything negative that would impact and harm Hill’s case going into that BRAC round. That’s why we fought so hard against it. The state of Utah had tried to limit and ban dumping nuclear spent fuel rods on the reservation. They could prohibit using state roads to bring the stuff into the reservation, that was acceptable, but everything else the state of Utah tried was thrown out by courts as infringing on emancipation of federal responsibilities. So, this is where I took up an idea that Jim Hansen started but did not get through because, ironically, the environmentalists screwed him. We took up Hansen’s idea of creating a wilderness area on the Cedar Mountains, which is in Skull Valley, which is legitimate wilderness, and expanding it a little bit so it prohibited the fuel consortium from bringing their nuclear waste by rail or building a rail spur on federal lands down to the reservation to dump it. They couldn’t go through the wilderness area. They could still bring a rail spur up from the south, but they’d have to go through mountains and it would be very expensive and difficult, and they didn’t really want to go to that kind of effort. We also realized, from the environmental approach, that if indeed we allowed the temporary storage at Skull Valley—and Yucca Mountain would always be difficult because we’re still not storing anything in Yucca Mountain— Utah would become the de facto site of all nuclear waste storage. I didn’t want that. The state didn’t want that, and the environmentalist community didn’t want that. The environmentalist community that had actually stopped Jim Hansen’s 10 efforts realized what they had done, and they realized they had to do something differently. I sat down with the environmentalists, and this is where the staff came in big-time, and we came up with an entire program of saving the Utah Test and Training Range, centered on creating wilderness that would prohibit this storage, but also giving protection on the flight area, the MOA, which stands for Military Operating Area. The flight area is much bigger than the Utah Test and Training Range and it has some legitimate wilderness areas and some just wilderness study areas that are underneath it, and there was always a problem. This was Jim Hansen’s hang-up: what would happen if the military lost part of a plane in a wilderness study area? How could you go in there and retrieve it? So, when I was there, we came up with compromise language with the environmentalist community. They realized they screwed up before and helped with a long-term solution of how one could protect the Test and Training Range, stop the above ground nuclear fuel rods being stored, and deal with all those wilderness areas under the flight patterns. That was the bill. Even with the environmentalists on board, it took at least three terms, maybe four terms, to finally get that one passed, and it was a continuous, ongoing effort. It was difficult to find out who actually was opposed to us and who was for us, because no one actually would announce it openly. The bottom line is, the reason we finally got it was because, for some reason, House Speaker Hastert liked me. In the National Defense Authorization Act, The Speaker basically said to the Senate, “Until you agree to put the Utah language in, we’re 11 not going to pass it in the House.” He basically bluffed them into allowing that language to go through. So, we created the wilderness, created the spur, blocked any kind of rail coming in there, and added another piece of language we call the Hansen Moratorium, that until the Air Force signed off on any changes to the land management plans in that area, it couldn’t be changed. So, we were able to have the land agency, the Department of Interior, this time formally stop any kind of rail spurs going in there. It can’t be changed until the Air Force does a study to allow it, and the Air Force said they weren’t going to do a study. The potential for nuclear waste storage hasn’t gone away. The consortium has a permit to actually do it, which runs for about twenty years. It still has five or six years to go, so if something were to change they could still legally come in and put that stuff there at Skull Valley. Only if they release their permit to do it from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will the issue permanently be solved. Then we can change all the land plans and do whatever we want. Legally, it still could happen. Everyone thinks the coffin’s been nailed shut and buried. It hasn’t. It’s still up there on the ground and there are still a couple of nails needed. SL: Interesting, because I was going to say, “You don’t hear about it anymore.” RB: No. SL: Now that the main part of it is done, people assume it was solved and fixed. RB: Those midwestern companies that created the consortium are storing their waste, but they’re storing it there on their sites and they’re, ironically, on Indian reservations in the Midwest, but they’re still storing it back there where it’s being created. 12 AK: I was reading in a newspaper article that you were also working to make this solution favorable to the Goshute Tribe as well. What did you do to help with that? I know that this was mainly attractive to them as a way to make revenue for their tribe. So, what did that look like? RB: Yes, and we tried to help them with some other kinds of economic development that could take place out there. However, we have to realize the Goshute Tribe was not united on this project. The leadership was for it. They actually did have a referendum, about half of the tribe voted no, so it was never a united position. This consortium, I found this out later, was spending a whole lot of money on this project. They spent like four hundred million dollars just in lobbying and political contributions during that particular period of time. I didn’t realize they were spending that kind of money to try and buy their way into this. So, I don’t feel that bad about stopping them from dumping the stuff out here. Once again, the bottom line is the effort to stop that was really for our effort to make Hill BRACproof. It would’ve harmed Hill’s position if that storage site had been there. AK: Yeah, absolutely. I thought that was an interesting detail, that you were also trying to help that tribe still have the economic advantages that they would get from that without harming the Test and Training Range, so I just wanted more information about that. RB: Yeah. Well, we never had the ability to meet the kinds of numbers that the consortium was promising them, but it wouldn’t have been a longtime economic benefit. I mean, you build a storage site once, and there’s not a whole lot after that. 13 AK: That makes sense. SL: So, another issue that came up is, of course, the sage grouse, and how President Obama was trying to put that on the endangered species list and how that would affect Hill and the testing range as well. RB: Yeah. Alright, the entire story? SL: Yes. RB: Okay, you’re going to be bored like Hell. So, first of all, the sage grouse was never endangered. There was a lawsuit that came about there to put sage grouse on the endangered species list, and instead of the Department of Interior fighting the lawsuit (they were supposed to defend the government position), they decided to just give in and say, “Okay, we’ll make you a deal that we’ll do what you want if you withdraw the lawsuit.” The lawsuit never went to court, so the idea of actually scientifically finding out if there was an endangerment of this bird never happened, and it never has been endangered, so the settlement came up with arbitrary standards of what it would do. Now the real reason that the environmental groups wanted to have it listed in the first place is so they could stop any kind of economic development in other areas. They were really after oil and gas development in other parts of Utah and western states, and that ticked me off. What I thought was, “What if I had an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit them from doing this so they couldn’t screw around in eastern Utah over oil and gas developments?” I really introduced the amendment just to be a jerk. Literally, that was the only reason I did it. Just ‘cause. 14 When I introduced it though, what we found is that the military really was concerned about the potential for sage grouse as inhibiting not only the Utah Test and Training Range here, but all test and training ranges, especially in Nevada and Idaho. There are military ranges in Idaho and in Washington State right now where the military use is prohibited in certain parts of the year simply because of an endangered species that is found on the range or might be found on the range. So, they’re limited in their use of the range. What I found as I introduced the amendment was all the military agencies said, “Yes, this is a concern. Thank you for finally asking us about it.” Technically, the Interior Department should have contacted the Defense Department and made them a cooperating agency, but Interior never did. They just passed out their silly rules and regulations without contacting everybody and knowing exactly how it would impact anybody else. Because of the situation, the Defense Department couldn’t say anything, until I had an amendment and now this is when the agencies—actually it was the military, it wasn’t the Defense Department itself, it was actually the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy—came back and said, “Yes, we do have concerns about it. Not only concerns about limiting what can happen on our ranges,” but we talked about that MOA, that area of flight that could be over endangered habitat areas. If indeed you had sage grouse as an endangered species in one of the flight areas, you could get some stupid judge, and there are plenty out there, who could make some kind of regulation that says you ban all kinds of flights above 15 that habitat area. That was one of the things we all worried about. They were literally worried about what would happen if this actually went forward. I stumbled into this where the military was saying, “Thank you for finally talking to us. Yeah, we have concerns about it.” The controversy lasted two terms. We did it twice. I got it passed in the House versions on the floor both times. People tried to take it out but we maintained it, because all of a sudden we had military support. I should say it was not just banning a listing. What we’re doing is saying—back up again, I’m sorry. When the Interior Department made their deal, they said states had to come up with their own plans. The state of Utah, as well as other states, spent a lot of time and money coming up with plans that took military concerns into account. The Interior Department basically said, “Screw it. We’ll endorse Wyoming’s plan, but for the rest of you we’re just going to put a blind nationwide standard on the rest of you.” So, Utah spent a lot of time and money and effort to come up with a good plan. My amendment simply said, “You have to go with the state plans for at least ten years to see if those plans work before you can ever sue on this issue again.” So, it was to stop the lawsuits, stop a judge from coming up with a stupid decision, and implementing the state plans. It wasn’t just saying, “No, there’s no protection to the bird.” That’s what we were trying to do. We got it through the House both times and it went to the conference committee, and then there was one senator who was basically a jerk about the entire thing. He simply sat on it. What he was saying, the first time, was the language would cause President Obama to veto the bill. So, after a lot of 16 pressure on this one senator, and a lot of pain, and a lot of negotiations that went back and forth, the language was stripped. The irony was that Obama vetoed it anyway, so the senator gained nothing in the process. I was told later by some of the senator’s staffers that had there been sage grouse in his state he would’ve been on our side. Since he was wrong the first time, he just got his back up and the second time and also refused to have it added. He threatened to filibuster it if we added it in on his side, so it was one senator who stopped us. I like what we did, and though it wasn’t my original intent, all of a sudden we found that it’s what should have been done the first time around. So, that’s why I, laughingly, have been known as Mr. Sage Grouse, and people keep giving our office stuffed sage grouses. SL: Why was it so important for you to bring the F-35s to Hill? RB: That kind of cemented Hill Air Force Base’s position. Because we are not building as many F-35s as we need or we were going to, the competition to get F-35s was extremely tight. So, the fact that it was the Air Force that decided, it wasn’t me, it was the Air Force that decided that this should be the place for the first bed down of the F-35—and we have three squadrons of F-35s here—was an enormous plus for Hill Air Force Base. It’s very prestigious for Hill Air Force Base, and it protects the base going forward, because, once again, it was not like a Chamber of Commerce effort saying, “We should have them here ‘cause…” This was the Air Force saying, “This is the best site for them.” What it was also able to do is disprove a lot of the rumors that were going around that would be negative towards Hill Air Force Base if anyone were dumb 17 enough to try another BRAC round again. For example, the Defense Department did a really shoddy survey of bases that were in danger of “natural causes,” and they said Hill Air Force Base was in danger of both flooding and wildfires, because occasionally we flood somewhere in Utah and occasionally we have wildfires here. No one had ever actually gone through to realize if Hill Air Force Base was in danger of a wildfire, Layton and Clearfield would have to be burned at the same time, or since Hill Air Force Base was on a plateau, if there were flooding, Davis County, Salt Lake, and Ogden would all be underwater at the same time. Fortunately, the Air Force realized how dumb this was and they did another review which listed their top ten bases that were in danger of environmental concerns and Hill wasn’t on that list at all. The real bases that are in danger are the ones on the coastline, which are in paths of hurricanes and invading rising waters or by a river that would actually flood. Even so, you wouldn’t close down Tyndall even though it’s in that hurricane path, nor would you actually close down Hill. But I didn’t want people to have ammunition to use against Hill. There was another one that came out that said, “Hill doesn’t have good flying days,” because of the winter inversions we have here. The Air Force once again did a study and found out that Hill actually has more viable flying days than other bases, that our winters, simply, are really not that bad. Plus, you have to learn how to fly in winter situations anyway, so that actually became a plus for Hill going forward. 18 AK: So, you mentioned you were part of getting Jim Hansen on the ‘05 BRAC committee. Could you talk a little bit about the process of that? RB: The Speaker of the House had two appointments that he could make to the BRAC panel. We thought Jim Hansen would be the ideal person because he had spent sixteen years on the Armed Service Committee. He would have been the number two Republican on the committee had he stayed in office. He had total background. He’d lived through those experiences, and people knew Jim Hansen back in Washington as being somebody who was meticulously honest. So, we knew that he’d be an easy sell because people knew his integrity. He wouldn’t be in there just as a shield to protect Hill, if there’s a reason Hill should go, he would have the integrity to say, “Okay, it goes.” We knew he would be there and had enough background and information to make sure that nothing unfair happened towards Hill and Hill’s reputation while they were going through the process. I remember going back there in the first term, and initially, what I tried to do was actually get rid of the BRAC in the first place. We did pass an amendment, twice, in the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, on the House side to just postpone the BRAC. Obviously, I could not get that if there weren’t a whole lot of people who didn’t want to go through the pain of another BRAC round in the first place; there were a lot of people who were worried and wanted to postpone it. In each case when we went to the Conference Committee with the Senate it was eventually pulled at the insistence of the Bush Administration. 19 The next effort was, even if it was going to go through, and it was going to go through, was to make sure we get Jim Hansen as one of the commissioners who, just by his background and his personality, was an ideal choice. I do remember talking to everybody, from Speaker Hastert on down, as to why he would be a good selection, and Hansen’s reputation amongst his colleagues was very high. It wasn’t really a hard sale. I must’ve talked to everybody. I remember specifically sitting down and talking to Frank Wolf about this, and I really can’t remember now why, because he had nothing to do with the selection. He was an appropriator but that’s about it. I think I was just talking to everybody who would sit down and talk to me about it, who had five or more years of experience in Congress. Jim Hansen was appointed. He did serve with distinction. He was a plus to the BRAC Commission. AK: You mentioned that part of your reason for wanting Jim Hansen on the committee was also so that he would protect Hill from any damage to its reputation. How did he make efforts to keep Hill in a good light, even once it wasn’t closed down? RB: Well, I mentioned those studies that said Hill was vulnerable? He would have realized they’re all bull. So, it wasn’t that he was there to protect Hill, he was there to make sure that Hill was not unfairly maligned in any of the reports. The big plus was Hill was saved, not because of anything I did, not even what Jim Hansen did. Hill was saved because of what Hill did. The workforce here is superb, really unparalleled. The community support is just phenomenal. When we had the hearings of the basing of the F-35s at Hill, there was not a single 20 public comment against it. Now, they tried to put some F-35s in Vermont for the National Guard unit there, and the comments coming from Vermont were just offthe-wall. They were crazy, as people in Vermont were thinking, “Oh, we can’t have the F-35s because they would accidentally drop bombs.” The idea of bombing Montpelier, Vermont to me has a lot of merit, but it was still a stupid idea. The kind of public commitment we had here was unique and the workforce was unique. Hill Air Force Base, I can’t remember what General McMahon called it, but it’s basically the Lean Project, where they went through the depot maintenance work and they tried to figure out how, by getting bottom-up input, they could do the maintenance work cheaper, faster, and with fewer personnel and less space to it. So, they totally re-did everything. They met and beat their deadlines. They beat any other competition of what any base or a private vendor could do as far as the work. In fact, they shrunk the amount of foot space they needed in this Lean Project to the point that there was a whole lot of excess space at Hill Air Force Base that they weren’t using anymore. I was worried, because that could’ve been one of the red marks against Hill, that we’ve got too many buildings out there. I mean, I’m glad that they were able to do it better and more efficiently, but they gave us a potential negative, so that’s how paranoid we were about some of those things. Hill itself became more effective and efficient, the workforce was great, the community support was superb. Here’s where the legislature came into effect. The legislature assisted with efforts to make sure that encroachment issues would be solved. It was really the 21 community coming together to make sure that, for the military side, Hill was a good, productive and an efficient base. The military is what sold it. I sometimes get chagrined because I feel like this “ra ra Chamber of Commerce” stuff and “this is so great,” and “Hill is essential for the economy of the state of Utah.” It’s true, but we don’t save Hill Air Force Base because of that. If it was a lousy base, we should not save it. The fact is, Hill is one of the best bases the Air Force has. It has all sorts of different kinds of missions. It cannot be replicated anywhere else. That has become, because of the community, the workforce, and the leadership at Hill Air Force Base that’s made it that way. SL: You talked a little bit about future BRACs and the fact that we’re trying not to have future BRACs because ‘95 and 2005 were really not the cost savings issue that they thought they would be. RB: They were designed, they were sold, as a way of cutting back unnecessary military structures that we have. In a few cases it worked, but in most cases, we didn’t have cost savings. I mean, the net savings did not exist. Probably one of the reasons was if you closed down Base X you had to move that stuff to Base Y; there’s a moving cost associated with it, there’s a building cost associated with that. So, it wasn’t really cost-effective and it caused a great deal of chaos and disharmony within the communities that were impacted by it. Let’s face it, in some respects, the fact that they went through the ‘93 and ‘95 BRAC did help Hill Air Force Base out. So, even though the Clinton Administration wanted to save Sacramento and San Antonio for political reasons, they didn’t do it as we went from five depots to three. Now, you have to have at 22 least some depots, this is as low as you can get. There is no way the Air Force can do its repair work with fewer than three depots. I think that makes Hill really secure. In fact, the irony is the Navy has excess depot space. If the three depots in the Air Force were to absorb the Navy’s plane maintenance, we could easily do that. So, it’s actually the Navy that is surplussed if they’re ever going to do that again, and the Navy never wants to admit that, certainly John McCain wouldn’t. So, as far as the depots, Hill has to be here, and Hill is so much more than just a depot. It also has the fighter wing, it has the ground base triad repair work, it has the ammo dump, it has the maintenance that it’s doing, it has all the computer work that it’s doing. It’s doing so many things. If you try to take Hill and replicate it somewhere else, you could not afford to do that. AK: Was it during the 2005 BRAC round that the general feeling was that these weren’t actually saving money after all, that it was more of a political thing? RB: Yeah, that was clearly one of the messages, but it has also been a message since then that is very clear. We have done stuff to make sure, just in case somebody is dumb enough to try another BRAC, that we have BRAC-proofed Hill Air Force Base. There’s always that particular effort. That message that it didn’t save money, that’s really a post- ‘05 message. Same thing with the sage grouse, that was an issue that was post- ‘05, so you’re still dealing with ways of securing. Also, with the Utah Test and Training Range, it’s probably one of those things that no one realizes how important it is. We’ve got to test all the stuff that the military uses, and the UTTR is the largest land-based place to do that. In fact, 23 it’s the only one. I mean, you have other bases and other ranges like Gold Water and Nellis, but they’re smaller. We’ve got lots of area at Eglin to do that kind of training, but that’s over water, it’s not the same thing as land. So, the UTTR is essential and Hill is the base that runs that. That’s such a huge thing, which means we will always try and defend UTTR with the same kind of fervor as we defend Hill Air Force Base, because they’re connected and one helps the other. SL: So, you mentioned a little bit about Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent; how did that come to Hill and what is the impact of that on securing the future of Hill? RB: Once again, that’s a military decision. They’re the ones that came up with that. We were obviously supportive of it—and once again, they’re connected. The fact that we were doing the extended-use lease program—which was another thing that was tough to get started. There were a lot of people in the military who didn’t think it could ever happen, but we did it well. The fact that we had that program provided space for the private sector, in this case Northrop Grumman, to actually do the implementation of it. The fact that we had already had those who were doing the engineering portion of it already here on base was, for the private sector as well as the military, this was the ideal location for it. So, they decided and we didn’t have to do anything political to bring it here. We did defend it though. There are voices out there that are saying you don’t need to have a newer version of the Minuteman. Even though the Minuteman was designed when I was in elementary school, there are people who think it’s still okay to keep it going, that it doesn’t have to be updated, or that they don’t need a third leg to our nuclear triad to defend this country. Those 24 people are certifiably crazy, but they are out there. So, as long as you have a rational policy that doesn’t destroy the land base component of our defense, it’s going to be here and it’s going to be perfect and it’s going to be a major employer for Northern Utah. There are voices out there that are saying, “We might as well cut the entire thing.” Those people scare me. It was not that long ago, if you remember, there was an administration that had four major military reductions in money and two manpower reductions, which really put our military in serious jeopardy, and there are people who were involved in those decisions who are still there today. That’s one of the scary parts for the future. GBSD—first of all, has to get a better name. It’s a stupid name for the program. Minuteman was cool. You have to get a cool name for this. People would become more excited about it if it had a cool name—but the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent is there, it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right place, but there could be political decisions to cut it that could jeopardize what’s happening at Hill. Not the need for it, not the logic of it, and not the military desire to have the program. SL: So, how do you view Hill’s position if there are future BRACs? RB: If there’s a BRAC where they really discuss all bases, Hill is in great shape because the Air Force has legitimately listed it as one of the major bases. I think one time they listed it as the third most important base they have for their entire operations. Because we’re now down to three depots, because of the 388th and the 419th, because of the GBSD, the Minuteman repair work, because of the 25 ammo maintenance work, all the space being there, Hill is in a great place, a great position, to survive any BRAC round. Plus, I don’t really think there’s a political will to do another BRAC round. Once again, you can argue there’s not a financial reason to do another BRAC round. SL: What risks, you mentioned it a little bit, political risks if they move the GBSDs out? RB: They won’t move it. They might cut the funding for it, or decide not to do the program. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, but there are people advocating that. SL: Do you see any other risks to Hill, other than cutting the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent? RB: Political ones? Playing politics with Hill is the only real issue that’s there. Yes, there is another risk for Hill Air Force Base but it’s bigger than politics. We need to up our education system in the state of Utah, especially with engineering. There are not enough engineers for engineering needs in the private sector as well as the military, and the military doesn’t pay as much, and the military makes you go through about sixth months of background checks and stuff before you can get in there. You really have to be patriotic and want to serve in the military, to help the military, to take a position here. The nice thing is this is not just a Utah issue, this is nationwide. There are not enough engineers coming out to help the military. There are also a couple of things like—it’s not a big thing in this NDAA, I hope this NDAA passes because we finally got it in there—there’s a 180-day 26 cooling-off period to hire people, which was designed originally so the generals couldn’t make a sweetheart deal for themselves. It doesn’t impact generals; it impacts lieutenants and majors and people who are G-10s and G-11s. What it is, simply, you have to wait 180 days between the time you leave the military before you can accept a civilian position doing the same kind of work. So, we had people who would retire from the military who would be perfect, would be ideal, for these jobs and are trained for them. They’re wonderful, but they have to wait six months. These are the kinds of people who don’t make enough to wait around six months waiting for the job to come open. So, we harm ourselves. We’re doing everything we can and finally we got the unions online that this is not going to harm the unions. Everyone’s there. We just need to make sure that that’s finally put in place, and get rid of that 180-day waiting period, because it hurts the ability of the military to hire people they need who are perfect for those civilian positions. So, those kinds of things are a danger to Hill Air Force Base in the future, not the mission, and certainly not the workforce or the community support. SL: So, speaking of community support, what do you think Utah needs to do to be successful in keeping and growing Hill Air Force Base? RB: I think one of the things that we helped, when I was in the legislature, was allowing people to have a greater understanding of what Hill does. They’re doing that, the public outreach is there—to understand what the programs are, to understand what’s happening here, to have that kind of community involvement in a lot of things. The Utah Defense Alliance has community leaders who are 27 coming together specifically to understand and help this. The state’s MIDA program, I probably can’t overestimate how important that extended-use lease program is, with the idea of actually developing land along the corridor there of the freeway. Once you develop that you can put proceeds from that, the renting of that land to private companies, and you can put that into the maintenance of the base, which helps everything. That was really hard to get, primarily because when MIDA came about, the Army had tried extended-use leases and screwed it up terribly, so there were people in the Air Force that didn’t think it could ever be done. I remember a lot of conversations I had with the head of the Air Force at the time, just to convince him to let it go forward, that it can work and the Air Force can do it well. He’s admitted to me that he was wrong, that it has proven its value and its worth. So, that EUL is extremely important, and that’s where the state of Utah comes in with their MIDA program, which also is essential as an element and part of that. So, there’s a lot of things the state can do to help Hill Air Force Base and the awareness of what it is. It’s important. When I was growing up it was just outside Hill Field; I still make that mistake and people get upset with me because I call it Hill Field. It’s definitely more than just a field. I do remember my two oldest kids, who are now in their late thirties, I took them to my parents’ house in Kaysville and two planes flew over, and that’s the first they had ever heard a military plane fly over. Scared the crap out of them. They actually ran into the lilac bushes to hide. So, there are a lot of people that may instinctively know that they don’t really know Hill. Those 28 people who live around this area, now especially, because we have the encroachment boundaries around here, they understand it. I occasionally will get somebody calling in from Syracuse saying, “Can’t you stop those planes from making so much noise?” No, and they were here before you were. AK: I’m interested to know a little bit more about the process of how we got the legislature involved in Hill Air Force Base. It sounds like Blake Chard was the main person involved back in the, gosh, what was it, 1980s or 1990s? RB: He was a catalyst, and it would have to have been the late 1980s, maybe. Could’ve been the early 1990s. I left in 1994, so it had to have been before that. I do think I was the Speaker when we came up here, I may have been Majority Leader, but it was that time period. AK: Okay. You’d said that, originally, Hill Air Force Base was more of a federal project. What was the process of getting the legislature more interested and involved in Hill Air Force Base then? What was the decision making behind that? RB: It really was. I give Blake credit to this one because he was the one that said, “There really should be more of a community involvement in what’s going on.” Because, to be honest, people in the community weren’t getting past the gates. They didn’t know what was going on here, which means there can be a lot of rumors about what takes place at Hill Air Force Base, a lot of misinformation. I think it helps that General Lyles was here and he wanted to try and do that; I don’t think some of the generals before him actually wanted community involvement in what was taking place. Sometimes it involves more effort to work with the community. 29 The fact is, we came on a big bus that we chartered, the first time the legislature ever did some of that kind of stuff, and saw what was going on, and everyone was going, “Well, I didn’t know we did that kind of stuff here.” That’s the important part here, that people can actually come here now and say, “Gee, I didn’t know this was that important,” and it also changes the mindset too. I don’t want to sound like, “Hill Air Force Base is important simply because it drives the economy of Utah.” It does, it’s the largest employer in Utah, but it’s got to be more than that. If you’re not on base, if you’re not really seeing what’s taking place there, if you’re not having that kind of relationship one-on-one, then sometimes you don’t quite understand what’s going on, and you build the idea that it’s just an economic piece. You have to realize that it is the defense of this country. If Hill Air Force Base is efficient and effective and it’s doing its job, my kids are safer because of it. That’s why I think the community support is much better today than it was then; because they know more. That’s why the community support is so essential, and that’s why it resonated when they based the F-35s here and there were no negative comments. Yeah, the F-35 is noisier, especially if it has to do a quick take-off, which doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the Air Force has to do that kind of stuff. Quick take-off is a lot noisier. The Tyndall and Eglin Bases had lots of people complaining about the noise of the F-35 down there. They shouldn’t have, but they were complaining about it. No one complained about it here. We knew it was coming and realized, as Jim Hansen used to say, “It’s the sound of freedom.” When you understand that and believe it, it makes everything a lot 30 easier and the cooperation becomes smoother and we’re willing to do things to help Hill Air Force Base, whether it’s EUL or buying property to make sure we don’t have encroachment issues. It’s all a mindset of how people look at it, and we need to maintain that. SL: Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come and talk to us about this. We really appreciate it. TK: Actually, can I ask a quick question? I’m curious to know, in a world where the BRAC did succeed and Hill closed, what does Utah look like today? If it did close in ‘95. RB: Ghost town. I mean, Utah’s resilient, we would’ve found something else. There just would have been a whole lot fewer people, you would have a whole lot of abandoned buildings here, the housing market would go from a sellers’ market right now—it would’ve totally reversed that. Utah would continue on, it just wouldn’t be the same kind of lifestyle that we have right now. The other thing is, remember that Hill Air Force Base is not just the base itself, you have to supply Hill Air Force Base, and you have all sorts of companies and businesses here that are spin-offs from that. Like with SELDI program. There are few things politically you can do to help Hill Air Force Base, but the SELDI program is an effort to try and help Hill Air Force Base become more efficient by using private-sector computer crap—those people who play around with computers, which I don’t and hate with a passion—they can actually make Hill Air Force Base more efficient in what they’re doing, and SELDI involves a private company. 31 Even though the federal government doesn’t directly fund private companies, the federal government funds the SELDI program so that the Air Force can go out and contract with private companies to provide the service. They contract with people who are local. So, the fact is, Hill Air Force Base is not just an economic engine by itself, it’s the spin-offs that take place that build the economy around here that aren’t really part of the equation, but they are. Without all of that, the education funding would be severely constricted, you wouldn’t have twenty-seven thousand plus kids at Weber State and it may still be Weber State College. All those things are the byproduct of what’s going on at Hill Air Force Base, which is why the community should be supportive and keep politics out if as much as humanly possible. TK: Thank you. SL: Alright, thank you so much. RB: You’re welcome. I hope I gave you something you can use. SL: Oh yes, you did. 32