Oral History Program Steven Petersen Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 20 & 27 January 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Steven Petersen Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 20 & 27 January 2021 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 The 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: Petersen, Steven, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 20 & 27 January 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Steve Peterson. It was conducted on January 20 and 27, 2021 through Zoom. Peterson shares his memories of 1991, 1993, and 1995 Base Realignment and Closures as a member of Congressman Jim Hansen’s office. Peterson talks about the closing of Tooele Army Depot after the 1993 BRAC and why Congressman Hansen was so instrumental in the fight against closure during the 1995 BRAC. The interviewer is Sarah Langsdon. Also in the room is Alyssa Kammerman. SL: All right, so we'll go ahead and get started. This is Sarah Langston. I am here interviewing Steven Peterson via Zoom. Today is January 20, 2021. With me is Alyssa Kammerman. Steve, first of all, thank you for agreeing to do this. We were excited to track you down and be able to talk. Jim Hansen was such an important part of this and not being able to interview him, we figured we'd get as close as we can, and that was you. First of all, when did you start working for Jim Hansen? SP: Well, I first started in 1985 as an intern from Utah State University. My intent was to come back to the capital and put in a three-month internship and then return back to school. After I was there, his chief of staff asked if I would stay on, and of course, I was excited. It was new. I was thrilled; I'd found what I wanted to do. I stayed on for six months, but reality set in and I realized I had to go back and finish my undergrad degree, and then my plan was to go to law school, which I did. So, I did nine months in 1985, graduated with a four-year degree, then law school, and then started again in earnest January 1, 1990. I still had my last semester at law school to do, so I worked in the day and went to Georgetown 1 Law School Night Division to finish my law degree. So, from 1990 until he retired, I believe it was 18 years, I worked for Hansen. Most of those years, except for a five-year period when I was his district director there in Ogden, I did his military work. SL: Okay, so why don't you talk to us a little bit about the ‘91 BRAC round? You would have been fairly new there, but the effect of the '91 BRAC round. SP: Right, I'd just like to take a moment to preface it with the background of BRAC, why a BRAC round was even held. Prior to the 1991 round of BRAC, whenever the Department of Defense tried to close a base or move missions around, they were stymied by political interference by delegations and governors who would stick something in an appropriations bill that said you can't close this base. So, as a result, the Pentagon, they had the legacy leftover from the Cold War buildup. So, you had a lot of B-52 bases when we were shrinking, the Soviet Union had collapsed, or it was in the process of collapsing as far as the military threat to the US, at least in some areas. Dick Armey at the time, a representative from Texas, came up with the idea of insulating politicians from the political ability to interfere with the DOD, to do what they need to do. What emerged was this process and there was language passed, I believe, in 1990 that authorized three rounds. 1991, 1993, and 1995. Then the process would sunset. So, with that background, the commission is set up so that each department in the military, they first do a study about what is their projected need. Then they do their own internal study, based on that, how much they could cut. Then they forward recommendations to the secretary of the service and then 2 on up to the secretary of defense, who then forwards that recommendation to Congress. Then the commission is chosen. The speaker and the majority leader all have a pick. The Senate has a pick. Anyway, there's a commission set up, and then the process is on autopilot and there's very little that a congressman or senator can do once it's on. We can try to influence the BRAC commission and the analysts, but at the end of the day, when the BRAC makes a final recommendation, it's about a nine-month process, their decision becomes law. It's as if it were passed by Congress. Only Congress can derail it by a two-thirds vote in both chambers, House and Senate. Straight up and down vote. They can't amend it or anything. So, it was a pretty interesting process. With that background, in the 1991 round, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. There were a lot of legacy installations around the country that, frankly, should have been closed, and the DOD would love to have closed them but for political interference in this process. The ‘91 round was really not a threat to Utah's interests or Hill Air Force Base. The biggest casualty out of 1991 was Fort Douglas, up above Salt Lake, on the bench. It actually was a decision that the delegation supported because what it meant was that a good share of the Fort Douglas property could then be transferred to the University of Utah for expansion, and the University of Utah needed that extra breathing room. Over time, the reserve missions up at Fort Douglas have shrunk somewhat the footprint of their buildings. They still occupy some of the old pioneer-era buildings up there. Beautiful place. So, there's been back and forth. Will the day ever come when the Army completely closes Fort Douglas? Because 3 those historic facilities are very expensive to maintain and maybe not the most efficient, but they're beautiful, they're historic. The ’91 round left part of it intact, but a lot of it closed. There was a lot of property up on the foothill that they weren't using but then were able to transfer to the University of Utah. So, that was about it for the ’91 round. SL: Then ‘93 comes around, and Hill is a little more on the table. SP: Yes, most definitely. Hill was being looked at. I'd been on staff again for about three years. Jim Hansen was on the House Armed Services Committee, and at that time, every single one of the Utah installations was in his congressional district. This was before redistricting. So, here I was, this young staffer having to defend Defense Depot Ogden with its 3,000 jobs, Tooele Army Depot, part of which was the depot jobs there were on the chopping block—another 3,000 jobs. Dugway Proving Ground was also on the chopping block, and I've tried to go back, but they all meld together at some point. But in ‘93, Hill was being looked at. I don't think it was on the list, but it was being looked at. I may be wrong. I can't remember about ‘93. The ‘93 focus, what we were really concerned about was Tooele Army Depot and Dugway Proving Ground. At this point, I have to pause and just say to the Army, my friends in the Army, every time they did a BRAC, ‘91, ‘93, ’95, Dugway Proving Ground. I should have gone back when we were talking ‘91 BRAC; they put Dugway Proving Ground on the chopping block to close it. Every single time the Army secretary, when he or she, can't remember exactly who it was, but they came before the BRAC Commission and he said, "Mr. Chairman, the Army's made a 4 mistake. We respectfully request that you remove Dugway Proving Ground from the list of Army closures." Every single time. We'd almost jump by the time we got to ‘95 round. We can expect the Army will recommend it again and then request that it be taken off. Different reasons why the Army did that. A lot of it is that Dugway is out of sight, out of mind and it's a big footprint. It has a lot of real estate out there in the desert, so the Army could get credit for closing the place. But then after some of the other agencies in the federal government, some of our intelligence agencies who rely on testing and other things out there would brief the Army secretary like, “We made a mistake, we'll take it off the list.” That happened again in ‘93. So, right off the bat, even though it was on the list, they requested to be taken off the list. Tooele Army Depot was the biggest target, as was Defense Depot, Ogden. Both of those were right in the crosshairs. I was all by myself as a staffer with the Utah delegation. I mean, the other the two senators and the other congressmen. First of all, I think it was only in Hansen's district, so it was viewed as, "Well, he's on armed services. He can fight the fight. We have other fish to fry." Both Senators were supportive. Particularly Orrin Hatch, he'd always say, “Jim, you're on the Armed Services Committee. Whatever you say we need to do, I support you.” They were good friends, and Senator Hatch was very good about whenever Jim Hansen would say "Senator, this is going on. We need you to do this." Senator Hatch would always, always be engaged and do that. 5 But for Tooele in 1993, there was a decision to close the depot jobs. Now, people are unfamiliar with Tooele Army Depot and what it does. They think it's just a bunch of storage igloos out in the desert. Yes, they have that mission to store ammunition, but at this time, there were close to 3,000 depot jobs. Tooele had the mission to refurbish two and a half-ton trucks and generators for the entire army. We had succeeded in landing Tooele Army Depot as the spot for something called the Consolidated Maintenance Facility, or CMF. At the time it was a 120 million dollar construction project with another 80 million dollars worth of equipment inside. So, there's a 200 million dollar facility that was, at the time, cutting edge of manufacturing, refurbishing trucks, parts, distribution. All the parts were automated. People walking in would say it was almost like Willy Wonka, they'd be wearing a white frock and everything, and they would just be pushing buttons on a computer. It's like a truck needing refurbishment would pull in one side of the building and two days later it’d roll out the other side of the building, completely new, as if it was off the assembly line in Detroit. It was amazing. It was very capable of doing that on generators. We felt pretty confident before this that obviously with such modern capability, Tooele should be fine in a BRAC. What we came to realize was we were too good, we had too much capacity. We needed more work from other services who had two and a half-ton trucks, namely the Marine Corps, because there's no difference between the Army two and a half-ton truck and a Marine Corps truck. The Marine Corps had their own depot capability out in Barstow, California, and I'm the first to say I love 6 the Marines, I don't ever want to mess with the Marines. I don't think anybody should. But their depot maintenance compared to the CMF was cats and dogs. I mean, all their facilities out there were outside, and it was like George in his driveway jacking up his truck and doing that. That's what the Marines did, and compared to what I just described of the modern facility, we thought we were good. There was a long fight to even get the CMF fully completed. Sometime that would be an interesting side story. But at one point, Red River, Texas, that had an Army Depot that competed somewhat with Tooele, wanted to kill that funding because they knew that if we got it, it might endanger their mission being moved to Tooele, which they probably were correct. The Army decided to put Tooele as the site for two reasons. One, it was the very good work ethic of the people. This is a common thread throughout everything I'm going to discuss today, is that with the Army and with the Air Force experience, that historically, Utah work ethic and productivity was always number one. Fewer sick days taken, higher throughput, fewer error rates. Everything. They always stood head and shoulders above other locations. So, we had a competitive advantage in competing. But the other reason is that at the time Tooele Army Depot also was the location for stockpiling the largest share of the nation's obsolete chemical weapons in those storage igloos. The Army had a program, under a treaty with the Russians and other countries, a conventional weapons treaty, to demilitarize or destroy those weapons. There was a lot of controversy back in Utah when this 7 program was started. There were groups that were started to oppose what the Army's going to do. They were afraid of incineration, because that was the method the Army picked, to basically crush these munitions and burn them in furnaces. People were worried about what came out of the stacks, although the National Academy of Sciences said that it was nothing to worry about. But anyway, for goodwill with the Utah delegation supporting that mission, that important mission to get rid of it in time, I think that also played into their decision. But I think overall the most important was that Utah was efficient workload. In the ‘93 round, we were dependent upon getting more throughput through that facility, and so the only place we could get it other than Red River, in the Army, was with the Marine Corps out of Barstow, California, and Albany, Georgia, was the other place. We developed a case, I was by myself at that time, and put numbers together and actually drew up a document and arranged our defense, and it was a very intense process. That's where I lost my hair, seriously. It fell out. For nine months, I worked weekends. It was very tense. At one point, I went to my boss and said, “Other delegations with this much at risk have hired professional consultants. Can the state, given what's at stake, can you ask Governor Leavitt if he would support some?” Governor Leavitt said, “Yeah,” so they hired a guy named George Schlosberg out of Cuttack Rock Law Firm here in DC. He had been an assistant general counsel in the DOD and had done some military construction stuff. He had come recommended by somebody on the Armed Service Committee staff. I had limited interaction with him, and then he took what I had written, our case, 8 and he took it over a weekend and added a few flowery words to it and then billed the stake for his consulting, which, to this day, I'm a little aggravated that he profited off of my work. In the end, we had to get the commission to basically force an interservicing decision, and that was just a bridge too far. That was an early education for me about the whole concept, and I know it's one of the other questions coming up is about interservicing. The idea of interservicing is that you remove duplication in the government as much as possible to be efficient like a business would be. But when it comes to the military, I've come to actually appreciate some of the reasons why we maintain some duplication is that the services each want to control their destiny. They have lives on the line, out in conflict. When it comes to budgeting and priorities as far as getting equipment and sustainment through, they want to be able to say, "I can control the whole process." If they turn control over to another service, they have to go to their colleague and say, “Can you please help me?” That's just an attitude change that these generals just do not want to make. That's a very inarticulate way to say why interservicing thing hasn't happened. In the ‘93 round, we made a big case for it, and on paper it was ironclad. There's no question that it would save money. We could use the facility. But in the end, the commission decided, no, we have to close bases, and that was a loss for us. About 3,000 jobs. At the time, people were calling our office. I remember there was an investor that had invested money in building the new 9 Wal-Mart out in Tooele, and said, "Should we go ahead with building the WalMart?” I said, "That's for you to decide, don’t take my word, but the way Salt Lake's growing, I would tend to think the Tooele would be a bedroom community and they would continue to grow," which has proven to be the case. It's grown tremendously. Out of that BRAC, the Consolidated Maintenance Facility has been redeveloped by I believe, Cumming's Diesel, if they're still operating. I'm not sure, but they took it over and so some jobs remained. It's been used very well. There's some redevelopment opportunity there with the depot. So, that was the ‘93 round. Up at Defense Depot Ogden, there were some missions impacted there, but it wasn't the whole thing. That came in ‘95 when DDOU was closed. I'm trying to think what else about the ‘93 round. SL: So, didn't Hill, I think they had a few realignments, so they lost a few jobs. SP: Yeah exactly. It was shuffling the deck. We gained some, we lost some. I remember at one point we lost some of the tactical missile work to the Army. Actually, there was a little interservicing that they forced. There was Maverick missile work that was given to Letterkenny Depot up in Pennsylvania. I remember that was very controversial because I think on paper, we were more efficient. So, why did the BRAC decision come down that way? I don't know. I wasn't in the room when all the horse-trading was done at the end. But yeah, there was some of that, but it wasn't the wholesale threat of closing the depot that came in ‘95. 10 SL: Yeah. So, let's jump to the ‘95 round. We keep hearing about this conversation that Representative Hansen had with General Yates when it was leaked that Hill was on the chopping block. We interviewed Pat Condon, who was the general at Hill during that time, and he said he didn't know what happened in the phone call, he just got a call afterwards from General Yates and got yelled at. So, I was wondering if you knew what happened on that phone call. SP: Yes, I do. I wasn't there, but I heard about it from my boss. At the time, I was transitioning back here to be his district director from Washington, and he had a guy named Bill Johnson that I was training to take my place. All this was going down then. Okay, the BRAC Commission was started, the ’95 process had begun, and there was an initial release of their recommendations. All the services had their recommendations. As part of that recommendation, this is under the Clinton administration, the Air Force recommended closing McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California, and Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Both of those locations for the Air Force were air logistics centers. They called them centers back then. Big, huge industrial operations. In every case, an ALC was a major employer in the state, even in California and Texas, where they have huge populations, it was still a major economic driver. For Utah, it was like the biggest. Right? So, the recommendation to close those two in California and Texas was highly controversial, just from a job standpoint. The Washington Post, they had a column, it was kind of like a gossip column. I forget what it's called. Back then it was called “Inside the Beltway” or 11 something. It was a column, and it printed the rumor that some internal Air Force generals were at work to try to save California and Texas and offer up Hill Air Force Base in Utah instead. So, you might imagine when that hit the press, everything just screeched to a halt in the delegation. I mean, we reached for the red telephone. “What's going on?” One of the things that happened was Whitten Peters was the Air Force secretary at the time. He was actually a good friend with Jim Hansen. He had a good relationship with him, even though he was a Democrat staffer. They had a respect for each other. Whit Peters had testified to the Air Force in the very first hearing for the BRAC that our recommendation is to close Sacramento and Kelly. Then Whit Peters went to Europe for a trip, a business trip, and this all broke while he was over there. But Jim Hansen got on the phone, was able to track him down in Europe and said, "Whit, is this the Air Force position? Would you support offering up Hill instead of the two as you testified?" He said, "Absolutely not. The Air Force position is clear. I testified that we would only support closing those two bases." So, Jim said, "Great, when are you going to be home?" He said, "Well, I'm on a flight here in an hour and I'll be back in the Pentagon this afternoon." Jim said, "If you don't mind, I'll send my guy Bill Johnson over, and he'll pick that up in writing." Whit Peters agreed to put that in writing, and so when he got back, he did, he gave us a letter. I don't have a copy of it anywhere, but there was a letter we distributed widely once we got it. We sent it to The Post and 12 everybody else that that was the official position of the Air Force. It just stuck a pin in the balloon of that behind-the-scenes effort. I don't know to this day which brass were involved with that, but I think it was people who are connected maybe with the Clinton-Gore campaign, because they were looking at numbers and they were concerned about the electoral votes in both states. It was leading up to the ‘96 reelection bid of President Clinton. To this day, I think that was a brilliant outmaneuvering that Jim Hansen was able to do because of his good relationship with Whit Peters and just the timing of it, he was able to do that. But in the midst of all that, Jim was at home on a weekend. That's why I wasn't there, because I was still in Washington. They had a meeting at Tanzi's house to talk about all this. General Yates called, and Jim had a conversation with him. But I think what happened is that because it leaked out and because Jim did what he did, Yates, who was a friend of ours, I mean he supported Hill at least verbally. He was always very complimentary towards Hill. He would say openly to people, “It's my best installation within Air Force Materiel Command. It's my best base because they're most efficient.” But they had a conversation, and he tried to reassure Jim that he wasn't a part of that, that he supported the recommendation and so forth. I don't know the back story within the Air Force yet. I mean, a lot of that may never come to light, but there was a serious effort to go around with Peters, with the analysts on the BRAC Commission, because they can ignore what the service says. They can come up with their own recommendation, make it final. 13 There were some discussions back there, of course, they're confidential discussions, so we never knew anything about it. But there was a serious effort to do that. I'm just grateful that we were able to outmaneuver that and get them on record that, no, that's not anything they would support. Because how would that look for a BRAC commissioner to support, to do something that the service itself said they would not support? That would be pretty arrogant, and they just wouldn't go quite that far. SL: Do you think that leaking of the information really put Jim Hansen and others in Utah kind of on their toes of “Can we afford to lose another base?” SP: It certainly did put them on their toes. Like I said, it was like DEFCON five, grab the red phone, drop everything else. This is a brush fire we've got to put out, because it's got to be taken very seriously. We always knew that politically, even under a Republican administration. Electorally, we're a small state, particularly back then, we had one fewer representative then. So, when you're talking BRAC, when you're talking jobs, that's not a republican or democrat thing. That's just an individual thing. We always knew that we had to be on our toes, that the ‘95 round was very arduous, because all of those depot jobs, 24,000 jobs at risk. It's like somebody once said, I can't remember who it was that said, “If Hill Air Force Base had the sniffles then the surrounding area would catch pneumonia,” because there would be times when there'd be RIFs or reductions in force based on the funding levels that would come out each year. So, they would have to adjust the workforce to accommodate those workloads, and sometimes 14 that resulted in a RIF. People would get their pink slip, and boy, we heard from people. That was hard for people. One thing that government workers at the depot had always counted on in exchange for some lower wages as compared to the private sector, they could always count on some stability. Then we entered a phase of ups and downs basically during the beginning of the Clinton administration, because he instituted a 50% cut over the first four years in military spending, and that was quite a cut to absorb. Part of that filtered out in the workforce. AK: So, were the RIFs—the reductions in force—a ripple effect from some of the realignment that was going on at that time? SP: Yes, definitely there were people who would lose their jobs. There was a ranking in the system that they would be offered any open position elsewhere within the organization. That would mean for some of them that they would have to move out of state, which Utahans love to live in Utah. That's why they live there. They have family there, a lot of them. That was a hard decision. Some of them took advantage of it, but most would stay and try their luck at finding other work. But I don't think it was a massive amount of people. It was maybe on the order of two to three hundred people overall. The other thing I failed to mention was Defense Depot Ogden was ordered closed, and that was expected because the way to do logistics had improved significantly from World War II era. A lot of the facilities at DDOU and other depots were needing a lot of upkeep. They were needing a lot of repair, which is expensive. We anticipated they might want to close that. 15 At the same time, the Defense Logistics Agency, which basically owned that operation, still is the FedEx of the military. They ship parts around and they do all kinds of things. So, with Hill being preserved in the ‘95 round, the idea was General Pavich at the time was leading Hill/DDO'95. I worked with General Pavich on a plan to keep half the jobs in Utah but just move them up to Hill Air Force Base. With every BRAC comes a huge amount of money for new military construction and moves, because it's recognized that if you move a mission, it's going to take some remodeling, it's going to take moving costs. In some cases, you have to build a new facility. But overall, in the long term, the theory is it will be more efficient. So, we took advantage of that opportunity to have the BRAC Commission buy into that decision. They made it a part of their final recommendation, which meant that the Pentagon could then legally spend some of that money to remodel and build facilities up at Hill Air Force Base to accommodate that DLA mission. We counted that as making lemonade out of a lemon, and a lot of people were very grateful for that ingenuity. I credit that to Mike Pavich. He was a logistician. He was the commander of Sacramento, McClellan ALC, and then he retired, moved home to Utah, and we were able to pick him up as the leader of the Hill/DDO'95 while all this was going on. Well, that was a huge, maybe unfair advantage on our part, to have his insight about McClellan. He had a wealth of knowledge about how logistics operate. He came up with that plan, and I credit 16 him to this day. That was a wonderful, wonderful thing to pursue, and it ended up paying off. SL: Did Hansen receive any flak from his constituents for DDO closing? Because there was some feeling around here that DDO was sacrificed to save Hill. SP: Well, I'll put it this way: if you take any group of twenty-five hundred, three thousand people, there is a percent that maybe because of ignorance or because of political affiliation, they don't like him. I would have to say, as his defense guy at the time, I don't recall receiving any real recrimination or nasty letters or anything. I think what people saw was he was extremely engaged, and he was fighting for them. He was. Because of that, they valued the fact that he really put his heart and soul into it. There might have been some grumblings, but I think the reality is that people knew that there was a BRAC process and there's very little that a politician can do once BRAC is underway, and it was intended to be that way. Tooele, I thought that he would get a lot of pushback. He got complimentary letters, even from people who lost their job. “Thank you. Thank you for having fought for us.” To me, that speaks enormous volumes about the character of Utahans. Overall, I just, it was great. Now you look at what's happened to Ogden Depot and the property. It was full almost from the beginning. I do remember a couple of business leaders, and I won't mention their names for obvious reasons, that told me, "I support the closure of DDOU. That property is much more valuable as an industrial area." Now, that's nothing that we were gonna tell people. We fought, we fought to keep 17 the jobs there. I just bring that up that there was sentiment on the part of some business leaders that it would be very valuable, and I think that's borne out, that depot is full. I don't know the exact number, but it's created far more jobs than it was there with the depot. SL: Oh, yeah. Well more than 3,000. SP: Much more. SL: So, let's talk a little bit about the interservice and Hansen’s real push to make it a competitive process within the military. SP: Yes, the whole idea of interservicing was, like I was mentioning earlier, that you look between the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and see where there's commonality among sustainment and support missions, then try to find ways to come up with reducing that to be more efficient. Colin Powell at the time was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he would testify from the Armed Service Committee that he was a strong proponent of interservicing. When he left, one of his last statements in a hearing was that one of his regrets as chairman was that he was not able to make headway or force more of the interservicing. To this day, there are interservicing things that happen, but they're not on the scale that I think Jim Hansen viewed. More of it's just out of necessity. There are agreements between the services on some things, but for the most part, they still control their stovepipes. In the business world that would be looked at as waste. That's how we started looking at it. But in the military world, you have to factor in the fact of supporting the warfighter out in the field, and to have that command and control element. So, I think over time Congress's view of 18 interservicing has somewhat moderated from what it was then, to try to really force something, to instead try to find efficiencies through internal processes, through Lean Six Sigma and all those sorts of initiatives. The other thing is that the Air Force has been very adept at keeping their depot operations at the forefront of the cutting edge of technology. In some cases, the Air Force depots are on par with or even surpass private industry in some capabilities, which is amazing. I'm a farm kid from northern Utah. As a kid, I used to drive past Hill Air Force Base and just wonder what they do up there. In my job, I was able to get an education about what they do up there. Utahans would be fascinated and amazed at what goes on there, and proud, justifiably. They do amazing cutting-edge work up there. When you hear "depot," you think it's like a garage or something. In fact, one reporter for the Deseret News, years ago, Lee Davidson, would refer to the depot like a garage. I remember chiding him saying, “Lee, you need to go up there and visit, because it’s far from a garage. It's high-tech.” Now that everything is software-intensive, a lot of our effort in depot workload is in coding, it's in software, it's in equipment for the support software. That's a definite growth mission. It's high-dollar jobs. I mean, electric engineers and coders and everything are good-paying jobs. So, that's definitely a growth area. SL: So, when we look at ‘95 and the possible closure of Hill, was there any impact with the START treaty? I keep seeing that maybe it would have had to have been renegotiated with Russia. Is that true, or were there ways around it if they had actually closed Hill? 19 SP: I'm not a real expert on the START treaty. It's nothing that I followed in particular. But I just do know that out of that came the controversial decision basically to mothball the MX missile. They were capable of carrying up to 12 warheads, which helped bring down the Soviet Union because they couldn't defend against that sort of threat. When that went away, then the thought was, “These are destabilizing weapons because of that capability, we need to get rid of them and replace them with modernizing our Minuteman IIIs,” which can hold up to three warheads, which is why they're called IIIs. So, I would say that out of whatever the timeline on the treaty aspect, it just resulted in more work for Ogden, because we were the center of excellence, the designated depot for ICBM support. So, it was up to Ogden to mothball those engines, those big solid rocket motors, and take it apart and everything, and then also to upgrade the Minuteman IIIs, in cooperation with, at the time, ATK, which is now part of Northrop Grumman. It just resulted in more work for Ogden, which was great because it is the missile depot. Ogden is seen in the Air Force, for decades, as the place to do fighter jet maintenance, so F-16s, F-22s, F-35s, and also the missiles, the ICBMs, it's the only place where the Air Force sustains those systems. We also do work on C130s because the Navy, everybody has C-130s. Warner Robins typically does the big heavy lifters, but not to a point where there's so much work and they were limited. We had capacity and took some of that workload, so we’ve had some C130 work over the years too. SL: Can you talk a little bit about Hansen's drive to fight for Hill Air Force Base? 20 SP: Yeah, I'll tell you about Jim Hansen. You know, I'm not unbiased. I worked for him for 18 years. I got close to him, and I consider him like my father. He was a very principled, hard-working person. I know that he cared deeply about northern Utah and about the military. He had served in the Navy, and he trained for two years as a navigator. He got his pilot certification. So, he knew the military. He loved the military. He sought from the beginning to get Armed Services Committee and got on there during a time when they didn't let anybody on the Armed Services Committee who hadn't worn the uniform. That's long since gone away because there's fewer and fewer that have served in the military who are elected to Congress. I can tell you that he had two priorities in Congress: one was let's make government more efficient, balanced budget sort of things, and a strong military. He was elected in Reagan's first landslide election. It was the Reagan wave, and he signed up to the Reagan agenda, "Peace through strength." He was very engaged militarily in the military issues. So, for Utah, he counted it as something that he was personally invested in. He'd make regular visits to the base, he knew each commander, he would go to the commander dinners. He and I would meet all the time about committee stuff. What can we do? What amendments can we offer? What funding is up that we need to watch or protect? He was very, very engaged. So, when we came threatened by BRAC, he was very, very alerted and put his whole heart into it. 21 SL: Several people we've talked to have said he is really the reason behind saving Hill Air Force Base. He was the point person, the one that worked behind the scenes to make sure that that happened. SP: Well, you know, I can speak of it this way. I'm a person of faith, and so sometimes I think, “Well, it may have been divine intervention for some reason.” I don't know, but the timing of what happened with that revelation about Hill being offered up, it was a very real threat. Even after that, with the decision, the privatization in place was still an economic threat to Utah. He just kept after it, kept after it. Two years after the final recommendation was finalized by the BRAC to close Sacramento and San Antonio, move not all the workload, but some of the compatible workloads to Ogden, we were still fighting the privatization in place with the Clinton administration. In fact, Al Gore was on the telephone lobbying against Hansen language that I helped draft that put the nail in the coffin on privatization in place. It said you cannot use privatization in place as a way to circumvent the final decision of the BRAC commission. That's why we have a BRAC. As painful as it is, you have to close bases to save money over the long term. After a two-year fight, and against the administration's objection, Hansen was able to get that language in the conference report and it was made law, and so we put the final nail in the coffin on privatization in place. I count that as a huge victory. For me in my career, that was one of those stellar moments when it's like, “Yes! The underdog can win.” 22 SL: Prior to the BRAC making the recommendation, how much influence does Congress have? None whatsoever to try and keep them out of the BRAC process? SP: That's an excellent question. It's yes, you can influence it, and it's basically underground. You can influence it based on relationships you may have with key leaders in the military service, for example. So, if I'm a member of Congress and I'm on the Appropriations Committee, for example, that funds their operations, if I develop a good relationship with the commander of this, that or the other, or the secretary or assistant secretary, then you have an in, you have a way to make your views be known. Now, what they do with that is up to them. I mean, there's a whole army of people planning this stuff. It's not just like one person can arbitrarily say over in the Pentagon, “Let's close this base.” It has to be backed up by reams of data. The BRAC has to follow the Administrative Procedures Act, which means that the decisions cannot be arbitrary and capricious, is the legal standard. There has to be a reasonable basis for them deciding a final recommendation. There have been communities challenged that in court after the BRAC is met, and every time they've lost because they give deference to the BRAC Commission. But yes, they can influence based on relationship. Another thing that's an intangible that's very important and I think it's always played to Utah's favor: Utah has always been a very pro-military state and a very patriotic state. You hear that time and again from people who are stationed at Hill and then moved to other bases. They always say, "Oh, we loved 23 the time we lived in Utah at the base. The community just loved us. They were always saying nice things about what we do and so supportive when we needed this or that." That's one of those intangibles, but it goes a long way in influencing decisions like where they want to put families. Do they want to put them in the community? I won't pick a fight with communities. I could list names in America where it may not be the best to put families and have them expect a good experience. But at least so far, we have a wonderful record, and I think that that's a tremendous influence. SL: So, speaking of that, what do you think of and what was your view, and Hansen's view of the community support of Hill/DDO during the '95 BRAC round? SP: We had excellent support. Back in ’93, one of the lessons were that we needed a community support group that was organized. We'd always had good community support, but it just was here and there and it was random. It was not an organized support effort. So, out of the ‘93 round we formed the Hill/DDO'95, and actually I pushed the idea with Jim Hanson, who then talked to Governor Leavitt and to some of the stakeholders locally, like Scott Trundle, the publisher of the Ogden Standard-Examiner. You had Vickie McCall, who still is a prominent member of the UDA, and Steve Rush at Pacific Power. They were all very much engaged and agreed to form an entity. So, Scott Trundle was a lawyer, and he did the paperwork to form a 501C3 nonprofit group. At the time it was called Hill/DDO'95 in anticipation of fighting a fight in ‘95. When the round was over in ‘95, they changed the name to Utah Defense Alliance and recognize the mission continues, that we have to be 24 proactive and there may be some economic development portions of what we do. Which, they spun off the MIDA organization with support of the legislature for development around the base and Enhanced Use Lease opportunity there. SL: Okay, we'll stop there so you have time to get to your meeting, but I'd love to schedule a follow-up to finish out the questions. SP: Okay, I'm happy to do that. Day Two: 27 January 2021 SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I am here with Steve Petersen. It is January 27, 2021. This is part two of his interview on Hill Air Force Base and BRAC. With me as well is Alyssa Kammerman. Steve, again, thank you for taking your time out again today to continue this interview. So, last time we stopped right at the ‘95 BRAC round. Were you around when the BRAC commission came to Hill Air Force Base? Where you part of that? SP: I was. SL: Why don't you go ahead and talk a little bit about that? SP: Okay, so the ‘95 BRAC Commission. If my memory serves me right, there were two visits. By law, under the BRAC law that’s now expired, but under the process established by the BRAC law, each base had to receive at least one commissioner to visit each installation proposed for closure. After that, there were visits by BRAC analyst staff, and I wasn't necessarily a part of those, if I remember correctly. But of course, the visit by the BRAC commissioners was a high-profile event. The media was there, Utah Defense Alliance members were there, Utah delegation staff like me and Congressman Hansen, and I believe 25 Senator Hatch, I'm not entirely sure, but certainly some of Senator Hatch's staff were there. I would characterize those visits as a windshield tour. It's mainly for optics. No community with a significant stake wants to face the prospect of having it closed or significantly downsized without even having the assurance that the commission who decides their fate ultimately doesn't even know what's there. So, that's why that was put into the law. As far as my memory of the actual visit itself, what is it now? 25 years ago? I have to admit, my memory's a little foggy about it. I know it lasted the better part of the day. I can't remember which commissioners actually came to that particular visit. I remember the ‘93 BRAC visit much more for some reason, because it involved Tooele Army Depot. SL: Were you in the vans that picked them up from the airport, or were you at Hill? SP: I did not pick them up at the airport, but I was at the base with my boss, Jim Hansen, in order to receive them when they got here. SL: Do you remember the community support that was going on? SP: I do. I remember there was significant community support. In fact, it seemed like there was a little mini parade outside the front gate with people with signs and flags demonstrating support for the base. SL: So, we hear a lot about even though it was not supposed to be a political process, that there were a lot of political overtones involved with BRAC. Did you find that to be true? What were your feelings about that? 26 SP: Yeah, absolutely. So, life is politics. There's political implications in everything we do in daily life, and it may be very overt at times or it may be subterranean. I would say the BRAC process tried to take that into account and tried to create a process whereby it marched forward without the possibility of politicians being able to derail it, because there’s always an economic and political incentive to do so if their base is impacted. Keep in mind, this was the third round of BRAC from ’91, ’93, ‘95. The community started to get smart about how we can emerge from this. They would try to figure subterranean, who can we influence? Who are the decision-makers in the BRAC? Who are the key BRAC commissioners to, you know, get in touch with and convince? Who are the analysts on the BRAC staff to convince? Even before the announcement’s made about which candidates are on the BRAC list to start, beforehand trying to influence decision-makers within the Pentagon. Like, in the case of Hill Air Force Base, Air Force officials or DOD officials that would review Air Force recommendations before they were forwarded to the public, to try to put a bug in their ear and basically lobby them. It could run the gamut from any argument why they should stay open and be spared. If you look at the bios of the BRAC commissioners over time, they tended to come from the military, and a lot of politicians. My former boss, Jim Hansen, was a BRAC commissioner in 2005. They wanted to appoint people with a broad experience in the military from the different service perspectives so not one service was dominant in the whole process. So, you have a BRAC commissioner who had a Navy background, one or two that had Air Force, an Army, Marines, 27 just a mix. Republican politicians and Democrat politicians, depending on their position and congressional leadership under the BRAC law, could appoint commissioners. So, the speaker of the House had two picks, and the President of the Senate had two picks and so forth. It was quite the process. The business generated a lot of public notice. I would say that they were more for public relations purposes than actual data. They already had the data, their analysts were already busy crunching data, reviewing scenarios. It's good they came so they could put a base with a name. SL: So, what was the feeling in Hansen's office when the BRAC recommendations came down in ‘95 and Hill was not on the list, but it was McClellan and Kelly? SP: Well, it was a huge sigh of relief, although it was tempered somewhat by the decision on Defense Depot Ogden. Defense Depot Ogden had a very loyal, cohesive workforce, and they were almost like a big family. There's instances of fathers and sons and daughters all working at the base for two generations. So, it's very tight knit, very stable job, and they banded together to try to protect. We did our best to present the argument that its location—you know, Utah's sometimes referred to as the crossroads of the West, because you have the rail lines coming from the east and the interstate system going north and south and it's equidistant to the coasts. It is a great place to stage logistics operations for warehousing, parts, everything, and I still believe that's true. Hence Delta Airlines making it a hub, all those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, there was some analysis that we had too many of these places. We could consolidate it and save money. 28 So, at that time, General Mike Pavich was the head of—it was called Hill/DDO'95 before, and after BRAC they changed the name to Utah Defense Alliance to broaden its mission into the future for not just Hill AFB but other Utah defense interests. Mike Pavich was a retired two-star general out of Sacramento. I may have talked about him before in the first part, well respected general, very competent. He had brought his wealth of knowledge about the Sacramento air logistics center to put it to use. Not just Sacramento, but the whole Air Force logistics structure. When he and I were talking about what we might could do, came up with a plan, “We can spare a lot of those DDO jobs by moving them up to Hill Air Force Base.” The thing that people don't maybe understand is that it costs a tremendous amount of taxpayer money to implement a BRAC round, because they know that it's going to cost money to move people, to separate people. If you're co-locating, if you're reducing the location that does the same thing to one, you a lot of times have to do military construction to modify existing facilities to accommodate those extra people. Every time BRAC has been authorized, there's also a big appropriation in the budget that goes along with implementing the BRAC round that can go on for years. A big, healthy chunk of that BRAC money is military construction. It has to be because you have to, in some cases build new facilities, you have to remodel old ones. We were able to convince the commission to use some of that BRAC money, Military Construction (MILCON) money, to do that very thing up at Hill Air 29 Force Base and to relocate approximately half the jobs that had been impacted through the closure. I'm sure it was stressful for the workforce. I heard from a lot of them who would call our office during the whole process. I remember people breaking down on the phone like, “How am I going to pay my mortgage?” Here I was, this young congressional staffer. It's like, "I feel for you. We're trying, we're working night and day." I would say, when the decision came down, overall there was a huge sigh of relief that we narrowly escaped a political hit from the Clinton administration, which had basically worked to try behind the scenes to engineer and hopefully get the commission to approve sacrificing Ogden Air Logistics Center in order to keep Kelly in San Antonio and the Sacramento McLellan ALC open. It's my opinion, conservative opinion of a lot of people, was it was political, because President Clinton was going to be entering his reelection season in the ‘96 reelect, and you have California and Texas, huge electoral states, and these bases in California and Texas were significant employers. There was some concern about that. The thought was—and we haven't narrowed it down exactly who were involved other than Vice President Al Gore, because he later was very active in trying to thwart the outcome of the BRAC decision once it was finalized. The recommendation was to move quite a bit of workload to Ogden, as was from Kelly in San Antonio to Ogden. Once that was finalized, Al Gore was put to work basically trying to bring privatization in place in order to circumvent the BRAC decision. 30 We characterize that that's just pure political payoff to their constituencies, and it completely ran counter to the purpose of BRAC, which is to close bases and to save taxpayer money, to be more efficient. All those purposes of BRAC were thwarted by this idea. "Well, we don't care what the BRAC said. We'll just keep the jobs here and we'll privatize in place regardless of what the cost is." That goes to the politics of BRAC: there's pre-BRAC politics, there's politics during BRAC, and then post-BRAC politics. But luckily, it took two years, but while working for Congressman Hansen, we were able to put the nail in the coffin on privatization in place and got federal laws passed that said that privatization in place cannot be used to circumvent the final decision of a BRAC decision. To this day, I feel like that was a huge victory that went under the radar, because here was a Republican from a politically small state that took on the Clinton administration and we actually won. Al Gore is personally calling people at one point to oppose the Hansen language, but Hansen was tenacious, and he had influence even on the other side of the aisle. He had Democrat friends on the armed services committees, on both House and Senate, that agreed with him, so we were able to prevail. SL: You worked for Bishop as well, correct? SP: When Hansen retired, Congressman Bishop asked me to come on staff with him and to carry on the same defense work, so I did. I didn't know how long I would stay, but I enjoyed working those issues. I'm from Utah. I consider myself a Utahan. I went to work for him and worked for him the whole time he was in Congress until he retired earlier this month. 31 SL: So, I can't remember which Congressman, whether it was Hansen or Bishop, that with the Utah Test and Training Range, threatened to make it a national preserve. SP: Yes. So, that story was we had a Utah delegation member, the Democratic representative, Wayne Owens. He had, earlier in his career, floated the idea of making significant reductions to the Utah Test and Training Range by creating huge swaths of wilderness in the West Desert. Of course, that horrified Jim Hansen, who was very pro-military and understood the implication that would have on Utah jobs in the base, not to mention national readiness. So, those two were often at odds politically. Jim Hansen fought that effort by Owens, using the national readiness argument, and just on the facts he believed were compelling. "That's not a very smart idea. There's other places to create wilderness. We need the desert to train pilots to defend our national interests." For years, Hansen was on the Natural Resources Committee, as well as Armed Service Committee. Keep in mind the range is mainly airspace, it's not real estate, but it overflies public land. So, if you're doing anything to expand or deal with encroachment issues on the range, you're dealing with federal lands policy, which is the Natural Resources Committee jurisdiction in Congress. So, Hansen was ideally suited to deal with the range issues, both from a public lands and military standpoint. For years, Hansen fought the good fight to support the right thing to do. But when this plot came out during BRAC’95, that was subterranean, that surfaced in The Washington Post, this idea to sacrifice Hill to keep the other two 32 bases open, then Hansen did threaten the Air Force, saying, “Okay, fine, if you do that, then we'll go ahead and embrace Wayne Owens' idea and we'll just turn the west desert into a big wilderness area that you cannot fly over.” He characterized it as a two by four between the eyeballs moment for the Air Force, to just get their attention and rattle their chains, to say, “I'm the guy that's been in there slugging for you for how many decades now?” Well, a decade and a half at that point. “Yet you as a service are about to do this that goes against what your Air Force secretary has been testifying publicly is not the Air Force position?” So, I think he met threat with another threat. It was an example of a subterranean battle that got out into the public. At the end of the day, I don't think he would ever have cooperated on that. I think it was just a way to get the full attention of the Air Force. SL: So, did you work at all with Tim Ruppli, the lobbyist that was hired? SP: Yes, I did work with Tim. SL: So, what was that? We just keep hearing about Tim. I reached out to him, but what was the lobbyist's job? What did he do? SP: So, a lobbyist's role in a BRAC is to be an extra set of hands and ears in what is a very intense process. You think about it, I mean, even before the BRAC round starts formally, there's stuff leading up to the start of the round that you can do or have ear to the ground, “Here is what the recommendations' likely to do.” The lobbyist that presumably has contacts within the Pentagon or the administration can pick up information so that we can position ourselves or be ready for what's coming down the pike. Once the process starts, then they can be helpful in 33 recommending to the delegation and to the Utah Defense Alliance and the governor's office about how we should handle that round. They help develop the strategy. In a way, they're kind of like a lawyer that helps the defendant fight a legal case. They pick up information, they talk to people, they are a higher expertise level to help guide communities, because a lot of times communities are just hit with this, and there's a lot at stake, the clock's ticking, and it's like, “What do we do?” They spend valuable time flailing around, when if they had a cohesive strategy and a realistic picture of what's doable and what isn't doable. A consultant that's knowledgeable can be helpful. I think Tim filled that role fairly well. It's been quite a while now and I don't have any detailed notes, but he seemed to have connections within the administration at the time, as I recall, fairly high-level ones that he had worked with and could talk to. I think that was one of the main things he brought to the table. SL: What has been, since you worked for both Hansen and Bishop, their strategy to put Hill Air Force base in a better position for BRACs? SP: Excellent question. To some degree, it's hard to take credit for what the people up at Hill themselves have done. They are remarkable, and I say that not just as boosterism, or as a Utahan, but really Ogden Air Logistics Complex, the people that work there historically have been phenomenal and well renowned within the military and the Air Force for being top-notch people, very efficient. The efficiency measures that go into part of the BRAC decision-making have always favored 34 Hill. So, we would keep looking at those to make sure that they don't fall, make sure that the community is supportive. There's different measures of that. One of the things we looked at, it was past metrics that the BRAC commissioners used. They always use things like quality of life for the families that moved to Utah and that work there on the military side, but also for the civilian workers. What educational and cultural opportunities are there? There's a lot of things that surround quality of life issues for bases that actually can be a tiebreaker in a BRAC process. If you have two bases that are relatively equal on a military value standpoint, but one has more outstanding abilities for cultural outdoor recreation, education, versus another location, then it has been, in the past, a tiebreaker to favor that base versus the one that doesn't have as much. So, I think a lot of the effort was spent by the communities, by the Utah Defense Alliance and others, to focus on some of those. We had friends in the legislature who looked at those things and address things like educational opportunities for military families that are here, helping with job placements of spouses whose spouse had a full-time military job, but yet the other spouse didn't, like for teacher certification in the local schools to get a teaching job, that sort of thing. There's a lot of attention focused on that sort of thing. But on the military side, the military value side, which typically counted the most, aside from the efficiency ratings, Hill's ace in the hole has always been two things: one is the Utah Test and Training Range. You can't just pick up a base and move it anywhere in America and then have access to the Utah Test and Training Range. The last time I checked, real estate isn't being created. I guess 35 in Hawaii, there's a few acres every year because of Kilauea. But real estate's where it is, and so these vast open stretches in the west, these range complexes that have developed over time, are increasingly national test assets that not only Utahans but military planners are very concerned about protecting those. As our populations grow, as there's more demand for property and expansions and housing and everything, we have to pay attention to encroachment. So, one of the things we did was look at encroachments. One of the biggest encroachments that threatened the UTTR—and is still a very minor threat, but it's possible—is the threat of high-level nuclear waste coming to Utah from private fuel’s consortium. The discussion of that whole story would take a fair amount of time. But in a nutshell, these Eastern power utility companies were looking for a place to store high-level spent fuel rods. The idea from the Department of Energy, under the law, they have to take ownership of those spent fuel rods. They, meaning the Department of Energy and the federal taxpayer. The Energy Department’s plan always was to put it in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It was a repository being built. That would be the permanent repository for those fuel rods. Well, it was mostly built and on its way. Of course, Nevadans had a different viewpoint. They didn't want to be the dumping ground. I kind of understand that. Harry Reid, Senator Reid, obtained very high position as the Senate majority leader, and particularly under the Obama administration was able to shut off funding for Yucca Mountain. 36 Well, these fuel rods from these utilities kept piling up, and they increasingly had no place to store them. Many of them, their storage capacity onsite was just completely full, and they had to have a place to safely store them. This is high-level stuff. This is dangerous stuff. So, these utilities got together and formed a consortium to try to find a solution. They thought, “We need to go to an entity that can cut through local opposition, such as an Indian reservation.” Because the Native Americans under treaty relationship with the United States are more or less sovereign nations. The consortium thought they can use Native tribes’ sovereign status with them to get around local opposition and develop another a temporary repository. This is how they viewed it. So, it takes the problem off their side and it puts it out somewhere where out west far from their plants, which is where they wanted to put it. So, for whatever reason, they picked the northern band of Goshute Indians out in Skull Valley, Utah. The problem with that is it's right under the driveway, as it were, for fighter jets coming from Hill Air Force Base to fly over down to the southern MOA or Military Operating Area. In some degree, it's the most valuable part of the range because that's where totally unrestricted airspace, the most in the lower 48 states, is located. That's where the military has full rein and full control to fly from ground on up to space if they have to. That's a very valuable commodity. You can imagine with all the cross-country commercial air traffic and general aviation traffic, it's a very valuable asset. Putting that above-ground repository on the Goshute range in Skull Valley would require DOD under existing regulations to put a 10-mile no-fly zone over that facility, 37 plugging up the main way to get to the targeting range where they do live targeting runs. So, we fought it tooth and nail, because if it had gone in, it would have reduced the capacity of the UTTR by 40%. I mean, that's quite a hit on our capacity of a range. That had implications for weapons testing, for developmental testing on weapons platforms, all the kind of things they do out at UTTR, it would have significantly harmed it and maybe caused that work to go other places. We always viewed the UTTR as the anchor for positioning Hill to the future, because the depot jobs, which are the most jobs at Hill, their survival depends upon remaining efficient and competitive, which they are. But if they ever became less competitive, they could move the depot jobs just about anywhere. You can, I hate to use the analogy, but turn a wrench anywhere, right? Anywhere where there's favorable work conditions where they can recruit and re-train qualified people, that sort of thing. That brings another point: our depots are a really high-tech place, they’re cutting edge. We have to recruit and retain some of the highest talent for both software and electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. I think that, for the past several years, Hill Air Force Base could hire virtually everybody who graduated in Utah and surrounding states. I mean, there was such a shortage of those graduates depending on the need, and they're competing with private industry. A lot of the software companies we have are all competing for the same workforce. 38 So, working with the legislature on STEM education. A lot of work was done with the Davis Applied Technology Center and Weber State University, Utah State University, University of Utah on STEM education initiatives to try to grow more high school graduates to go into those programs. Once there, like the Davis Applied Technology Center, to focus on certain skill sets that are needed up on the base, whether it be composites or whether it's electronics repair, that sort of thing, they get some real good training that they can then be attractive for the base to pick those employees up. Really good working relationship there. So, STEM was very important. Workforce efficiency. The other thing that has been an ace in the hole for Hill, besides the range, was the fact that there are unique workloads. When I say unique, I mean like for Ogden, it's the only place in the United States military that certain things are done, and if you were to close the base and move it somewhere else, the cost would be so prohibitive that you can't. In other words, you can't close it. It would be a matter of dire national security. The case in point are the strategic defense or the nuclear missiles. Not the warheads, those never come to Hill. It's the solid rocket package, the segments. All of the components of the Minuteman IIIs are maintained regularly by Ogden. There are silos at Ogden that are used as part of the testing of these motors. When they pull them out of the ground up in Montana or Wyoming or wherever they are, they bring them to Utah to make sure that they're still good, that there isn't corrosion. Some of those systems are very old. That mission is unique to Ogden Air Logistics Complex. 39 The cost estimated in the BRAC‘95 to relocate that mission to any other base was over two billion dollars, just to replicate the actual physical facilities. Ogden also has the Little Mountain Tests complex out by the Great Salt Lake. It has a lot to do with that mission and the missile maintenance part. That's the part of the cost they would have to relocate, assuming they could get environmental permitting anywhere else to do that sort of thing. That's always been an ace in the hole. As long as the United States has long range nuclear missiles, defensive missiles like the Minuteman IIIs, or now Northrup Grumman is busy doing the GBSD program, which is a modernization of our nuclear missile capability, since Ogden's the designated site of maintenance and repair for those motors. It makes sense that it is, because it's co-located with the original manufacturer. Before Northrop Grumman, it was ATK. Before AKT, it was Thiokol. That co-location makes Ogden the natural choice to keep doing that. When the BRAC analysts look at totally closing a base, they want a complete closure in order to save the maximum amount of money. That's been ratified in past BRACs. You don't really save that much money if you have to keep the lights on and the guards out front to do any mission. So, as long as the missile work is there, then we successfully argued that you might as well make us a receiver location for other places that you can kill outright. I mean, I shouldn't use that word kill. What I mean by that is that you can close a base outright. That's the argument we've always used. 40 I believe that same sort of argument would argue for Hill's viability in the future, but again, you always have to be aware of politics. You have to be aware of new missions coming down the pike. A lot of the depot workload that has been done at Ogden has been on airframes. We're the fighter depot, so the F-16, F-22, F-35. We're known as the fighter depot to maintain those air frames and the components. Other than engines, engines are done in Oklahoma City. But some of the older systems, like the F-16 is a great air frame, it's been proven, but the maintenance on those can be more significant than new ones coming off. The composite air frames have longer life cycles and depot maintenance cycles where they bring it in for a complete overhaul. What that does is reduce the number of man-hours that are assigned to a center. Keep in mind that a center like Ogden, it can't just hire whoever and not pay attention to costs and hourly workload. By law, they have to size their workload and projected workload out a certain distance based on what the workload is going to be coming in. Every single function that they do in the depot is assigned man-hours. That cumulatively translates to the number of people that work at the center. The theory is that the center will never run in the red. It'll always be in the black. It operates on something called the Working Capital Fund, and by definition, the workload is efficient. It will never be bloated more than what the work is by definition, if it's administered correctly. So, we've always argued it's a very efficient way to run the depot, and the Air Force has had a great record, even vis a vis the other services, the Army and the Navy, on managing depot 41 maintenance. The Air Force has set the standard, in my opinion, in so many areas. SL: I was going to ask you about the Goshute, and you gave us a little more information about UTTR. We keep hearing it, but I guess I've never really grasped everything that happened. SP: When you talk to pilots who fly on the UTTR, they always come away just like, “That thing's a national treasure.” They love flying out on the range, that unrestricted airspace. It's relatively close to Hill. They can just fly out over the lake and boom, they're there. There's not a lot of physical encroachments, because it's pretty remote. There's ranchers down on the southern end that we've had some issues with. The noise would disturb their cattle, and so we were able to work with them and work those things out. I think the range is key, and the delegation can be very proactive in supporting the range, addressing encroachments, trying to mediate competition for the uses of those lands. Here a few years ago, I can't remember the exact year, but I'm guessing it's about five, six years ago, Congressman Bishop and Senator Hatch co-wrote an expansion of the Utah test range, which addressed some need of the Air Force to have additional capacity at the range to test certain missile systems coming down the pike. The JDAM, or the joint defense attack missile, is a longrange standoff missile that they fire. The actual range is classified, but it has a very long flight range, and it’s fired off at a high altitude and then it comes in a very high rate to hit a target. There's really nowhere else in America where they can live test the JDAM except the UTTR, so the need to preserve that capability 42 not only for the workload at Hill and Ogden but for the nation. You want pilots that know how to use that system if, unfortunately, we ever have to use it. At the same time, there are some land-use conflicts that have arisen. One of the things about Utah that we tout is the outdoor recreational opportunities. The hunting community in Utah is very, very strong. You have the bighorn sheep association that has invested their own money to try to work with the Utah State Wildlife people to bring back indigenous herds of bighorn sheep to the west desert. People like to go out and use ATVs in the West Desert, some people like the West Desert for the solitude. I understand that, so part of it is that we as a delegation, as elected officials representing Utah, working with local lawmakers and community leaders and with stakeholders, recreational groups, environmental groups, hunting groups, try to figure out a future road map of how can we co-exist? How can the Air Force have these certain areas that at certain times they can exclude the public for safety's sake? Because you don't want one of these missiles that malfunctions and inadvertently kills a family out recreating on the public land. It would be tragic. So, that's really all the Air Force has been after with these most recent range modifications, is to enhance public safety when they do these necessary tests, and to scale it back to what they need to have some flexibility there where they can work with us to say when they need that exclusive access, and what are the parameters by which they can mandate that people leave the area on public 43 land. So, we have to work with the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management on coming up with that. That legislation about six years ago addressed some of these areas of temporary closures. There was language in there to address hunting, that certain times of the year this area would be open for hunting and that sort of thing. So, I think as the future goes on, there may be some tweaks to that law that we may need to make. Always under a very open process. A lot of those decisions are not easily made. Sometimes you reach at loggerheads with others, and you have to keep talking. You have to keep working things out. The first Utah Test Range Protection Act that I drafted while on Hansen’s staff placed the Cedar Mountain Wilderness in place out in Tooele County. In that bill, we effectively drew the wilderness boundaries such that it would block the right of way for a needed rail spur off of the Union Pacific Railway to bring in cask of high-level nuclear waste. So, that's the other part of that story is that we were taking on these wellfunded consortium of utility companies that had a tremendous amount of money that they could tap into to build a rail spur and to pay off the Goshutes. It was all a private arrangement. It wasn't public. We had no idea. To this day, we don't know how much they paid the Goshutes. But half of the Goshute nation, the northern band, opposed the process. They didn't like the idea of their ancestral land being a repository for high-level nuclear waste. The other roughly half, including at the time the tribal leadership, saw it as a wonderful economic opportunity for them. So, it kind of drove a wedge in their tribe. 44 The Cedar Mountain Wilderness Act, which is what the bill was called, we did that. We recognize the Cedar Mountains were largely undisturbed. There were no significant resource conflicts. No active mining claims to speak of. There was a wild herd of horses up there. So, we were able to work to get it on the Utah Test Range Protection Act. All those things worked out, and we were able to pass that bill, that oh, by the way, also blocked any potential rail spur needed to import nuclear waste. We achieved those ends and legitimately so. The land was undeveloped. I think that shows that the delegation has been very proactive in wanting to do the right thing to bring people together. The Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area is an example of where oftentimes the environmental community seems to be at loggerheads with the delegation or with resource companies or whatever, but on Cedar Mountains it all seemed to come together, and I would argue to the benefit of everyone. I think that is a model that we should follow more in the future. But all of this is a long-winded way to say that UTTR is a national treasure and we should protect it. Now, part of the UTTR does spill over into Nevada, so you have to involve the Nevada delegation. We've had good cooperation out of Nevada in the past. Hopefully, it'll be the same. They have their own ranges in Nevada right now. They have Nellis Air Force range and then they also have Fallon Naval Testing Range in Fallon, Nevada. We've been happy to help them on their issues out there as well. 45 SL: Thank you for explaining that a little bit better for me. What do you think the importance of the Utah Defense Alliance is? SP: Of the importance to me, the UDA is invaluable for a place like Utah. The state has so much at stake economically, especially with defense. The University of Utah periodically will do an economic review of the impact of Hill Air Force Base on the Utah economy. In fact, we've done that every time as part of the BRAC process. The last one they did, that I'm aware of, said that the annual economic impact to Utah directly is somewhere close to three billion dollars. It's like two and a half, three billion dollars, with a B, and over 20,000 direct jobs between the civilian workforce and the military and the contractors. Keep in mind that a lot of the government jobs have migrated over to contractors in the last 20, 30 years. You add all of those direct jobs at Hill or that are responsible to answer to Hill, you're looking at over probably 30,000 jobs. In the state of Utah, if it was downsized significantly or, heaven forbid, closed, it would be an enormous hit, you would see car dealerships, you would see restaurants, you would see everything really feel the bite. That brings up another point in my mind is that one of the things we've always struggled with, and that the UDA has been helpful countering, is this perception—and not to denigrate our friends in Salt Lake or in Orem or Provo or even St. George. They're all Utahans, we love them, but when it comes to the impact of Air Force base on their life, they have been in a blissful ignorance. It's been hard to really say, “Seriously, you need to pay attention. If Hill Air Force Base catches a cold, you're going to get pneumonia, whether you know it or not.” 46 The spill off effects, the multiplier effects economically will hit Salt Lake. It'll hit the tax coffers for the state of Utah, collecting income tax off of employment. Unemployment will become a big hit. All the economic impact. So, is the UDA justified as a state-supported organization? It's a relatively small investment from the state to fund UDA, and UDA does get some private contributions, but I don't know what their annual budget is, but it's nothing compared to what's at stake. I was there at the beginning when the UDA was formed. It was Hill/DDO'95. There's a handful of the same people that are still there, and they're volunteers. They don't get paid. They take time out of their professional life, and all they've got going on, to volunteer their time and attention to doing whatever the group feels is necessary to support the delegation’s fights or they themselves being a support player. So, Utah has gotten a lot out of UDA. They've been very helpful with Falcon Hill, the enhanced use lease project at Hill. State legislators worked with us, and they were very thoughtful and worked hard. People like State Senators Jerry Stephenson and Stu Adams in the legislature. I hate to start naming names because I know I'll forget something because there's several of them that have been very helpful. But they helped establish something called MIDA, or the Military Industrial Development Authority, that's an offshoot of the UDA that's more into the actual economic development piece of the base. So, people, they'll drive by the entrance to Hill Air Force Base, the West Gate, all the time. I did growing up, see the West Gate, and wonder what was going on there. All of that real estate that lines Interstate 15, pretty much all that 47 you can see from I-15 right there is part of this Falcon Hill enhanced use lease project. That's a joint effort between commercial industry and the Air Force. The Air Force still owns the property, but they give industry, a developer, a long-term lease—I believe it's 50 years—to commercially develop that property. They will move the gate further in, the security gate, so that the land closest to the interstate can be commercialized. Then the revenue stream that's generated from that, it benefits the local municipalities that border that facility and also benefits the Air Force, because part of the agreement is that the developer will then build infrastructure and buildings up on the base that the Air Force needs and just hand them the keys to the door without having to spend a dime of taxpayers money. The developer benefits from it, from commercialization, the rate of return, the communities benefit because they generate sales tax that then come to their communities, and then the base benefits by not having to do MILCON, because the military construction budgets have gone way down in recent years. That's been one of the first areas they cut, push, kick the can down the road. "No, you don't need that hangar. You can get by another two, three, four years," when they really can't. But it's like an easy picking. Readiness funds are always the first go to when there's a budget problem in defense. So, the UDA saw this opportunity, joined with the Air Force and helped bring the Falcon Hill Enhance Use Lease authorization forward in Congress. As staff, we put forward legislation that authorized it specifically, because this was the first and the biggest in the entire DOD to do this concept. 48 The reason Hill could do it is because there used to be storage igloos closer to the interstate where they would store motors, and it was safe to do it, relatively speaking. I'm not saying it's dangerous, but there's always regulations about standoff storage distances for public safety, whenever you have an energetic, like a solid rocket propellant system or munitions, munitions that have solid rockets in them. There has to be a ring, a restrictive ring around that for any activity. So, as the design of newer storage igloos has improved, and they built new ones further up onto the base, they could get rid of some of these older ones closer to the road and move all their stuff further up on base. That opens up a whole unused land area for commercialization. It all got started under Bruce Evans, who was a legal JAG officer up on base. He was a lawyer for the Air Force. He passed away from cancer before he could see it come to fruition. But Jim Sutton was one of the execs at Hill. He and Bruce worked together tirelessly to come up with the idea that then they floated to the delegation staff and to the Utah Defense Alliance. We all worked together as a team to get that going. That is a big thing for Hill. I think that helps in the future with BRAC, to show that’s paying off for the Air Force, it’s partnering with private industry. I know that a lot of other bases have taken notice what we've done there, and they're looking at doing some of the same sort of things. I would say that it's a win-win for everybody. I mean, the Air Force gets stuff, commercial industry gets stuff, and then the tax revenue generated, plus the goods and services that are provided locally. When this was being developed, part of the issue was there's five municipalities who borders the base, 49 who's going to get the sales tax revenue? That's an important question. If I were the mayor of any one of those municipalities, I'd wonder too. Layton is the biggest one, population wise and geographically, but there's also Roy, Clearfield, Sunset. So, in order to be fair, they set up this MIDA organization that itself is modeled after a municipality. It has a bonding authority like a city would have to put in sewers and roads and to contract for policing and everything. Then the terms of the city's participation is all spelled out; they've negotiated it. It was very creative, and I believe it's been instrumental in helping that project move forward, and all those municipalities, they all benefit from that. SL: Do you have a question? AK: No. He keeps answering them all, so thank you. SL: You answered all my questions, so thank you, Steve. It's been really helpful and insightful. UDA wants us to create a book based on the interviews and things that we're gathering, so we'll keep you in the loop as we move forward in the process. I thank you again for taking your time out. SP: Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. 50