Category: Fall 2004 Newswire
High Salaries for Congressional Staff
By Thomas Rains
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 – Until the late 1800s, members of Congress had to do all of their own work, from writing legislation to responding to constituents, without help from any staff members.
The Senate first authorized its members to hire clerks with public funds in 1884, and the House followed suit in 1893. This allowed each member to have one staffer. Until then, the committee chairmen were allowed staff members, but only the more wealthy congressmen hired personal staff, with their own money. With the new rules, the publicly-funded staffers were paid $6 per day for the length of the session.
Oh, how times have changed.
In fiscal year 2004, each of New Hampshire and Maine’s senators spent approximately $2 million in public funds to pay their staffs in Washington and in state offices. In the House, the New Hampshire and Maine representatives each spent about three-quarters of a million dollars on staff expenses, according to an analysis conducted for Foster’s Daily Democrat using records filed with the House and Senate. All of the figures in this story are based on fiscal year 2004, which ran from Oct. 1, 2003, to Sept. 30, 2004.
With an annual salary of $152,388.06, in fiscal year 2004, Steven Abbott, Sen. Susan Collins’ chief of staff, was the highest paid of any staff member working for New Hampshire and Maine’s members of Congress.
Each member of Congress is given a budget from which to pay for staff and office expenses but it is up to each member to decide how that money will be spent.
“Salaries in congressional offices are set in basically the same way as normal offices only at a lower amount,” said Brad Fitch, deputy director of the Congressional Management Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organization.
When hiring and setting salaries, the applicants’ education and experience are considered as well as what they will bring to the office and their performance is evaluated when they are considered for raises, Fitch said.
The Senate
With a payroll of $2,018,825.19, Sen. Judd Gregg spent more on staff salaries than any member of Congress from New Hampshire and Maine, according to public records filed with the secretary of the Senate.
Gregg was followed closely by his Granite State colleague, Sen. John Sununu, who spent a total of $1,927,450.02 on his payroll.
The Maine senators’ payrolls were slightly less. Sen. Olympia Snowe spent $1,915,701.14 on her payroll, while her colleague Collins spent $1,879,850.49.
Collins’ payroll listed 99 staff members over the entire fiscal year, while Sununu’s only listed 43. Both Gregg and Snowe had staffs numbering somewhere in between.
Senators are permitted to hire as many employees as they want, as long as they do not go over their office budget, which is determined by state demographics and distance from Washington. Any money left over that the senators do not spend goes back to the federal treasury.
In the past six years Gregg has given back a total of $1.6 million, according to his communications director Erin Rath. Collins has returned more than $1 million since she was elected in 1996, and gives money back every year, press secretary Jen Burita said. Sununu has given back $400,000 since he arrived in the Senate in 2002, his communications director, Barbara Riley, said.
Senators salaries and pay raises are set by vote of the Senate. During 2004 all senators earned $157,250.02.
Some top aides were not far behind the senators themselves on the pay-scale- even some who lived in New Hampshire and Maine, where the cost of living is much lower than it is in Washington, D.C. All four of the New Hampshire and Maine senators’ chiefs of staff earned six-figure salaries,
The chief of staff is typically the highest ranking staff member in a congressional office and oversees all office matters involving employment, the budget, procedure and policy in addition to advising the senator on policy matters.
Steven Abbott, Sen. Collins’ chief of staff, was the highest paid of the four Senators’ chiefs of staff. Based in Washington, Abbottt made $152,388.06, in fiscal year 2004, including any bonuses he received.
Sen. Olympia Snowe’s current chief of staff John Richter, brought in $120,999.84 in fiscal year 2004. Antonia Ferrier, Snowe’s press secretary, would not comment on or confirm any of the staff salaries, which she said she did not know. “I would have to go look up people’s salaries,” she said, adding that that, “would be kind of weird.”
Freshman Sen. John Sununu’s Chief of Staff, Paul Collins, made $149,480.67 in fiscal year 2004. Collins, who is based in Portsmouth but often travels to Washington, has worked for Sununu since 1996 when he was first elected to Congress, according to Riley.
However, Collins’ counterpart in Sen. Judd Gregg’s office, chief of staff Joel Maiola, made almost $17,000 less in the same period, pulling in $132,864.86. Gregg communications director Rath noted in an email that Maiola’s annual salary is $145,000 but that he took time off in 2004 to do campaign work.
Maiola works out of both the Concord and Washington offices and has worked for Gregg since 1980 when Gregg was elected to the House, Rath said. Maiola was the only chief of staff out of the four New Hampshire and Maine offices who was not the highest paid staff member. In fact, he was the third highest paid.
Gregg’s administrative assistant, Vasiliki Christopoulos, made $145,925.70, though his annual salary, Rath said, was $142,000. This difference could have come from any bonuses she received. Christopoulos, who is based in Washington, joined Gregg’s staff after the 1992 campaign.
Gregg’s policy director and general counsel, John Mashburn, was the second highest-paid staff member in the senator’s office at $138,913.21. This was slightly more than his salary of $135,000, which – like Christopoulos – could be due to bonuses he received.
In the other three offices, the legislative directors were the second highest paid employees.
Sununu’s legislative director, Gregg Willhauck, made $99,690.34. Snowe’s legislative director, Carolyn Holmes, made $95,499.84, while Collins’ legislative director, James Dohoney, made $88,749.96.
Legislative assistants or communications directors were the third highest paid employees in Sununu, Snowe and Collins’ offices.
Michael O’Reilly, senior legislative assistant for Sununu, for example, made $95,470.66. O’Reilly joined the office in 2003 and is based in Washington.
Snowe’s legislative assistant, Samuel Horton, based in Washington, made $90,499.92.
Collins’ communications director, Jennifer Burita, made $83,749.86, making her the third highest paid staffer in Collins’ office.
These salaries are all above average for the Senate staffers, but generally Senate staff salaries are lower than the rest of the federal government.
There was a 32 percent pay disparity between Senate staff and federal staff, according to a Congressional Management Foundation report looking at 1991-2001, the most recent data available. The average Washington-based Senate salary was $49,236, and the average Washington-based federal employee salary was $64,969, according to the foundation.
Worse off were female Senate staffers, who only made 87 cents for every dollar earned by male staffers, according to the report. The average female salary was $45,845, while the average male salary was $52,876.
Senate staffers made out well compared with the U.S. labor force in general, however. According to the foundation study, Senate staffers made slightly more than the national average in 2001. The average Senate staff salary was $45,847, and the average U.S. labor force salary was $45,430.
The House
Rep. Thomas Allen of Maine’s First District had the highest payroll of the New Hampshire and Maine House delegations in fiscal year 2004 at $941,241.27.
Allen’s Maine colleague, Michael H. Michaud, had a slightly lower payroll at $835,400.46, while each of the New Hampshire representative’s payrolls was less.
Rep. Charlie Bass’ payroll was $734,909.67 for fiscal year 2004, while Rep. Jeb Bradley’s was $714,806.48.
House offices, unlike in the Senate, are limited to 18 full-time employees and four part-time employees at any given point in the year. The amount members can spend on their offices is determined by a formula that considers the district’s population and its distance from Washington.
Over the course of fiscal year 2004 Allen employed 30 different staffers, which was the most of the four legislators, and Bradley had the least at 22.
If the representatives do not use their entire budget, the money is returned to the House reserves.
Bass “usually doesn’t use his entire budget and gives back to the reserves,” press secretary Margo Shideler said.
Bradley press secretary Stephanie DuBois said he gave back $100,953 in 2003 and is projected to give back $250,000 in 2004.
Michaud’s press secretary confirmed the congressman has given back money from the total expense allowance granted for his office expenditures.
The representatives themselves each received a base salary of $158,100 in 2004, according to Fitch; but as in the Senate this money does not come out of the representatives’ office payrolls.
Also like the Senate, the House members’ top aides were not far behind their bosses in pay, though the average salary for House staffers is still lower than the rest of the federal government.
Just like their Senate counterparts, the chiefs of staff in the New Hampshire and Maine House offices were the highest paid staffers in those states’ delegations in fiscal year 2004.
Bass’ chief of staff, Darwin Cusack, who is based in Concord, brought in the most overall with $128,305.59. However, Shideler said Cusack’s salary was $125,000. This difference could be due to any bonuses Cusack received.
Allen’s chief of staff, Jacqueline Potter, made $120,900.01 in the fiscal year. Potter is based in Portland, but travels frequently to Washington.
Bradley’s chief of staff, Debra Vanderbeek, is based in Washington but still made less than her counterpart in Bass’ office, at $118,035.50 in fiscal year 2004.
Of the four New Hampshire and Maine congressmen, Michaud, a freshman at the time, paid his chief of staff, Peter Chandler, the least. Chandler, who is based in Washington, made $86,608.27. However, press secretary Monica Castellanos said this was due to time he took off from the office, and his salary is actually $92,000.
Allen’s and Bradley’s legislative directors brought in the second highest salaries in their respective offices, while Bass’ projects director and Michaud’s scheduler and executive assistant had the second highest salary in those offices.
Todd Stein, the legislative director in Allen’s office, is based in Washington and made $89,277.76. His counterpart in Bradley’s office, Michael Liles is based in Washington and made $69,844.43.
Bass’ projects director, Neil Levesque, who is based in New Hampshire, made $78,083.34. According to Shideler his salary was $75,000, and this difference could be due to bonuses.
Diane Smith, Michaud’s scheduler and executive assistant, is based in Lewiston and made $65,821.77, though Castellanos said his base salary was $60,000.
The third highest-paid positions varied by office.
Allen’s communications director, Mark Sullivan, made $73,872.24 and is based in Portland, though he frequently travels to Washington.
Michaud’s legislative director and deputy chief of staff, Matthew Robinson, is based in Washington and made $60,397.45 though his base salary was $57,800.
Bradley’s Washington-based projects director, Frank Guinta, made $56,694.40.
Bass’ Washington-based legislative director, Tad Furtado, made $73,611.08, but his salary was $75,000 .These differences could be due to any time the employees took off or any bonuses they received.
The New Hampshire and Maine staff salaries are on par with the rest of the House, according to the results of a not-yet-released Congressional Management Foundation study. According to the report, the average salary for a House chief of staff is $118,098.
House legislative directors generally made $70,602, while press secretaries or communications directors made $53,791, and top legislative assistants made, on average, $49,495.
Like the Senate, there is a disparity between what women and men earn: On average in 2004, according to the study, women on the House side earned 84 cents for every dollar men earned.
These statistics only account for what a staff member is paid from the congressman’s “clerk-hire” budget, and do not include salary from any committee staffs they may be on. Frequently staff members will work on committee staff as well as on the member’s staff, which means they may draw earnings from both.
“The NFL of Government”
The profile of the average congressional staff member is young, well-educated and single, according to the Congressional Management Foundation. The summary of the foundation’s House Study said, “This profile is in sharp contrast to the profile of the average worker nationwide.”
However, Fitch summed it up in layman’s terms. “There are no weak performers in congressional offices,” he said.
The staff members are “very bright, very intelligent,” Fitch said, and Capitol Hill is essentially “like the NFL of government.”
WIA Reauthorization Concerns Regional Planners
By Ken St. Onge
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2004 - Last Sunday, after almost four years, Marisol Morales won her battle to get off welfare and find a job.
"I didn't only do it for myself, I had to do it for the boys, too," said the single mother of a three-year-old son and the caretaker a five-year-old nephew she is in the process of adopting. She had been on welfare since her son was born. After two months on the staff at Habit Management Institute in Lawrence, she was excited to receive her final welfare check.
Morales credits her success to the Valley Works Career Center on South Union Street in Lawrence. As part of the center's structured work program she finished her GED, earned certificates in phlebotomy and medical office management and worked in a training program at Habit Management for two months before being hired in October.
Valley Works in Lawrence, like its sister center in Haverhill, is one of 39 centers across the state and nearly 2,000 nationwide that form the backbone of the government funded American workforce development system.
Congress established one-stop career centers in 1998 under the Workforce Investment Act, which combined more than 60 job training programs into single locations where three kinds of people - youths, disadvantaged adults and workers who have been laid off--could receive training best suited to their individual needs. Keeping with that idea, Congress designated three separate funding streams for each group
As early as next year, that could all change - but few know how and some local administrators are concerned what the changes could bring. Although the programs were designed and funded by Congress to treat groups of workers differently, some members of Congress - backed by the President - would like to revise those guidelines and let governors determine how to spend the money.
The Workforce Investment Act expired in 2003 and Congress failed to reauthorize it before adjourning earlier this month. After separately passing alternative versions of the bill, the House and Senate failed to reach a compromise, leaving it to be reintroduced in the new Congress.
Although the program continues to be funded, there is a growing disagreement over how best to do so. That controversy is likely to resurface if the bill is introduced next year.
House Republicans, led by Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.), favor consolidating the three separate funds into a single block grant to the states to be spent under the discretion of their governors. McKeon sponsored a bill to make those changes in May 2003, which passed, 220-204.
McKeon, said his spokesman, Vartan Djihanian, plans to reintroduce the bill with only a few small changes early in the next session.
In the Senate, Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) introduced a bill that would leave the original structure intact, saying it provides greater flexibility to local economies, which have needs that can vary greatly within a state. The Senate passed the bill, and the competing versions were sent to Senate and House negotiators in November 2003.
The White House favors the single block grant approach, saying it would eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and save money that could be spent on more training, said Ken Lisaius, a White House spokesman.
Some congressional scholars see the single block grant proposal as a first step toward scrapping the program
"Once a program is block-granted, one of two things happens, sometimes both," said Margy Waller, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, "Either Congress loses interest because they don't control how the dollars are spent or they get uncomfortable with the fact they've given so much authority to states and local government."
Under the current system, funds are distributed in Massachusetts according to a federal formula that takes into account the growth of the region's population and workforce. Congress allocates money into three separate streams for each of the three categories of workers.
That money goes to the Massachusetts Department of Career Services, which distributes it to the state's 16 regional Workforce Investment Boards. Under the McKeon bill, those funds would have been consolidated and the governor would have been free to designate each of the funds for any relevant purpose in a region.
"If they change the funding, I think the concern is that someone is going to lose somewhere," said Stephanie Powers, CEO of the Washington-based National Association of Workforce Boards. "We don't know how that's going to play out because every state will be different in how it uses the money."
"I think the conventional wisdom here in Washington is that consolidation is always next to cutting funding," she said.
The Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board runs the two Valley Works Career Centers. The board's 39 members decide how best to train workers to fit the region's available jobs.
"It could make the funding streams more difficult in terms of how you would allocate money because right now it comes down in separate money and we service people through separate categories," said Arthur Chilingirian, executive director of the
Department of Training and Development, the regional entity that administers the board's funds.
"My sense of it is that the president thinks that by going to a block grant, you cut administrative costs and you bring more training into the programs," Chilingirian said. "But I'm not sure how that's going to work."
It has been the lack of funds, rather than the structure of the program, that remains the largest obstacle in helping customers of the center, he said. The board receives 84 percent of its money from the federal government and, including emergency grants to assist workers dislocated by major closings such as Lucent's local plant, the budget has decreased over the last four years.
"We're not sure at the local level how it will impact," Chilingirian said. "But there definitely could be a change in the way the funding stream would be. If it comes block granted it's definitely going to change the way business would be done."
The region faces a range of workforce problems, said Shaw Rosen, executive director of the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board. Those problems reflect the local economic conditions, she said, such as bringing in first-time workers and youths who need assistance in developing skills to re-employing workers laid off because of recent closings.
The centers' programs are focused on preparing workers for available jobs in the region, she said, and that task is often a challenge since no single worker faces exactly the same circumstances.
Methuen natives Robert Pomerleau, 58, and his wife, Mary Pomerleau, 53, faced the challenge of re-entering the workforce after being laid off when Lucent closed its plant in North Andover in 2002.
Robert Pomerleau had been an employee there for five years, having spent 18 months as a consultant before being hired. His wife had been at Lucent for 32 years.
"I was providing PC support to about 700 Bell labs employees before I left," said Robert, who now works as an instructor at Northern Essex Community College and has a small consulting business.
"The psychological support was as important as anything I received," he said of his re-training experience.
At the center, the Pomerleaus attended workshops and went through mock interviews. They were both certified in Microsoft Office, which Robert now teaches. Mary also was certified in medical terminology. She ultimately found a job at a CPA firm in North Andover by answering a newspaper advertisement.
"It's kind of scary getting back out into the market when you have not had to look for a job for 30 years," she said. "Seeing other people who are in the same situation as you kind of helps also. You don't feel like you are all by yourself."
Although it is too early to tell what impact consolidation of the three funding streams might have on regional entities, planners are concerned that it could diminish local control
"That's where the rubber hits the road, and we need flexibility to meet the local needs," the National Association of Workforce Boards' Powers said. "Nobody goes to the statehouse looking for work and nobody goes to the statehouse to hire."
"It certainly will depend on the governor," Rosen said. "Economic development happens locally. The importance of preserving the role of a regional board is very important."
###
Proposed New College Student Database Raises Privacy Concerns
By Huijuan Jia
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 -Federal officials are considering creating a national database containing detailed information about students including financial data, a move advocates say would facilitate tracking performance of colleges but critics argue would constitute an invasion of the students' privacy.
The National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the Department of Education responsible for gathering and processing data, is studying the feasibility of a proposed redesign of its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which currently requires that colleges report student data in summary form. The proposal calls for creating a new "unit record" system in which schools would provide the information on a student-by-student basis instead of in a broad summary.
The current system collects survey data from all post-secondary schools that receive federal financial assistance. Student data currently collected by the Web-based system include enrollments, completions, graduation rates, tuition and student financial aid. Much of this data is aggregated by several student characteristics.
Under the proposed change, the department would use Social Security numbers to match each student's data in different portions of the database. In addition to the information currently collected, the new system would include data on tuition and fees paid, loans and federal, state and institutional grant awards for each student enrolled in the school.
Proponents of the proposal, including the American Council on Education, the
American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the State Higher
Education Executive Officers Association, argue that the present system is unable to provide an accurate portrayal of how well colleges educate students in a number of measures, including, for example, graduation rates.
Advocates also argue that the new system would help to more accurately measure a college's performance by providing better information on the graduation rate, and for the first time, track an institution's net price, or what students actually pay after financial aid.
Critics, however, particularly lobbyists for private colleges, have expressed concerns that such a new system would invade a student's privacy and could also expose students to identity theft.
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents private colleges, strongly opposes the proposal. Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations of the association, said "there is a Big Brother aspect of all of this."
"We do not believe that the price for enrolling in college should be permanent entry into a federal registry, and we fear that the existence of such a massive registry will prove irresistible to future demands for access to the data for non-educational purposes," the association stated in an issue brief on its Website, "The idea that students would enter a federal registry by enrolling in college and could be tracked for the rest of their lives is frightening. A central database containing massive amounts of data for each of the 16.5 million post-secondary students in the United States, including those who do not receive any federal financial aid, is chilling."
With identity theft on the rise and colleges moving away from the use of Social Security numbers, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities called the proposed system "a step backward for privacy rights."
Jeff von Munkwitz-Smith, university registrar at the University of Connecticut, said he supports the goal of providing better information on graduation rates, time to completion, student migration and the real cost of attendance but believes the proposal would "unnecessarily increase" the burden on institutions.
"As with most proposals, the devil is in the details," he said, "Decisions about the data elements to be collected, data element definitions and the timing of the submissions will make a huge difference in the burden on institutions. Keeping the process as clean and simple as possible would benefit all of us."
One of the purposes of the new system would be verify enrollment for loans through the National Student Loan Data System. But Munkwitz-Smith said that institutions already have the ability to provide such verifications.
"If the purpose of the change to unit record data collection is to be able to answer the questions that Congress, institutions and the public have about graduation rates, etc.," he said in an e-mail response. "Why needlessly complicate the change by attempting to solve a problem that institutions already have solved?"
Congress will start early next year to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which sets the rules for higher education-related grants and expired at the end of September. Advocates of the new system would like Congress to include a field test in approximately 1,200 to 1,500 institutions in 2006-2007, and nationwide implementation in 2007-2008, according to Dennis Carroll, associate commissioner of the postsecondary studies division at the National Center for Education Statistics.
In late October and early November, the center sponsored three conferences, called "technical review panels," to discuss converting the current data collection system. At the November 9-10 meeting, the center's commissioner, Robert Lerner, reiterated that the agency would take no action unless Congress authorizes the proposal and appropriates funds for its implementation.
Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, and other advocates of the proposal have been urging Congress to consider establishing the unit record system as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Hartle warned at the meeting that there would be dangers to the higher education community if the new system is not revised, but he doubted it could be done quickly and easily. He called the timetable "breathtakingly optimistic," citing privacy and technical issues as stumbling blocks to moving forward.
Bernard Fryshman, executive vice president of the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools, called the database a "total invasion of privacy of individuals and a major change."
"It isn't anybody's business where I've gone or what I've done," Fryshman said. "Nobody should record these data, no matter how well protected."
Carroll assured that no one outside of the National Center for Education Statistics and its contractors would have access to the database.
"Records go in, but never go out," Carroll said.
But some education experts, including Becky Timmons, the American Council on Education's director of government relations, worried that other agencies might want access to the database once it is built.
At an earlier meeting in November, panelists expressed their concerns about using Social Security numbers as the tracking device in the data. Peggye Cohen, assistant vice president of George Washington University, said that students there are "up in arms" over the use of Social Security numbers and that the school is involved in a big project to stop using them in order to help cut down on identity theft.
Enacting the proposal also would require changing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which requires a student's or parent's permission to release most student records.
As part of the design of the unit record system, once it is authorized and appropriated, the National Center for Education Statistics said it would hold more panel meetings to discuss the issue of student privacy and rights. A report on the proposal is currently being prepared and is expected to be submitted to Congress in February.
The Department of Education has not released cost figures for implementing such a system, but higher education lobbyists estimate the project to initially require $4 million-$6 million.
###
Shipyard’s Future Uncertain as BRAC Nears
By Dennis Mayer
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Retired Navy Capt. William McDonough has been involved with the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for more than 30 years, but with another round of base closures scheduled for next year he does not know how long the facility has left.
"We're not cautiously optimistic, but we're not pessimistic, either," said McDonough, president of the Save our Shipyard association. "We should be in good shape, but the risk is there. It's a frustrating experience because we go through this periodically."
McDonough, who commanded the facility from 1974 to 1979 and has lived in the area since retiring from the Navy, has witnessed rounds of base closures - known as Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC - in 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. The program, designed to trim military excess that was unnecessary in a post-Cold War world, closed 97 bases throughout those four rounds. In at least one of those rounds, in 1995, Portsmouth was considered seriously for closure.
For the military, closing unnecessary bases saves money, though not right away, since closing a base usually means spending a large amount of money on cleaning up the facility. Nevertheless, the base-closing process had saved the government $17 billion by 2001, and would save $7 billion annually after that, according to a March 2003 report by the Department of Defense.
That same report estimated that the military currently has about 24 percent excess capacity that should be eliminated, a central motivating factor behind the cuts scheduled to take place next year (see timeline). But what are Portsmouth's chances of being in the 76 percent of bases that remain?
Owen Cote, associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program, said he wasn't sure Portsmouth, or the Navy's other shipyards, would be considered part of that excess capacity.
"In theory, it's possible Portsmouth is vulnerable, . but once such a facility closes, you'll never get one like it again," Cote said.
The Navy currently has four shipyards - Portsmouth, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii - that perform upkeep and maintenance on the Navy's surface and submarine fleet. Most construction projects are now contracted out to two private shipyards, in Groton, Conn. and Newport News, Va.
Portsmouth specializes in servicing Los-Angeles class submarines, a mid-sized attack submarine first deployed in 1976 that now forms the backbone of the Navy's attack submarine fleet - out of 55 attack subs currently deployed, 53 are Los Angeles-class.
According to Cote, with its license to service nuclear subs and its expertise in the Los Angeles-class submarines, the Portsmouth shipyard is a "niche" facility that should be relatively safe so long as there are nuclear subs to service.
He admitted that the base was probably not receiving a full workload, but discounted the importance of that, saying, "If there's some kind of surge requirement, it's good to have a bit of leeway."
Cote said he expected Air Force facilities, and especially Air National Guard units that share facilities with local civilian airports, to bear the brunt of this round of base closures.
Jack Spencer, a base realignment expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, wasn't so sure a facility like Portsmouth would be completely safe, since there are four shipyards and a shrinking fleet.
"Instead of having two places that can do the same thing, you have one base to do one thing," he said.
Spencer cautioned against relying entirely on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "do more with less" mantra to understand the process, but agreed it played a role in realignment's ultimate goal, especially where construction is concerned.
He said this round of cuts was different from previous rounds because this round, while designed to save money, is also aimed at streamlining the military from a Cold War-era industrial machine to "a more agile and flexible force" better suited to fighting terrorism around the world.
He also said that unlike previous years, this round would be less susceptible to political pressure to save individual bases. He said communities who believed their bases were in danger should focus more on what they could do to survive if their base was closed.
"The bases people fight to take off the table . are probably those that would be eliminated anyway," he said.
Portsmouth's survival in past rounds indicates it may again be able to dodge closure because of the nature of work performed there.
According to the Defense Department's 1995 base-closing report, Portsmouth was seriously considered for closure but was spared because naval officials were unsure how successful their new Seawolf submarine program would be. Seawolf-class submarines were designed to be quieter, faster and better armed than the Los Angeles-class ships, and were poised to supplant them as the standard U.S. naval attack submarines. However, the Navy wanted to keep its options open, realizing that the Los Angeles-class subs would become important if the Navy's need for submarines increased, or if the Seawolf program was discontinued.
That decision was prescient, since the Seawolf program was cut dramatically: The U.S.S. Seawolf was deployed in 1997, but since then only one has been commissioned, with a third scheduled for 2007. Los Angeles-class submarines have remained the Navy's submarine of choice.
The main danger Portsmouth faces is its diminishing workload. According to McDonough, the shipyard association president, the shipyard will soon run out of Los Angeles-class submarine refueling jobs, because the second half of submarines produced in that class were made with "lifetime" reactors that would last however long the boat was in service.
Once the refueling jobs are gone, the shipyard will still have routine maintenance and overhauls to perform, but its workload would be diminished.
"The workload is going down, we become increasingly vulnerable," he said.
The shipyard also has to compete with the private sector. New construction jobs have gone down in recent years, and as a result contractors have started to get the maintenance jobs that used to be the public shipyards' domain, a trend that troubles McDonough.
"Our administration has an obsession with turning over work to the private sector," he said. "I have trouble understanding the feeling behind that."
"It's the same money," he said, but the government loses both control over the process and the benefit of naval expertise.
One way the base could increase its future workload and buttress its chances of staying open would be outfitting its facilities to service the next generation of submarines.
For example the Virginia-class submarine is another improvement on the Los Angeles-class design. The first ship in this class, the USS Virginia, was commissioned this October, and at least five more are planned (two are under construction and scheduled to be delivered to the Navy by 2006). Those submarines will need maintenance. Portsmouth is already scheduled to perform the first scheduled maintenance session on theVirginia in 2010.
But first, the shipyard will have to survive this latest round of cuts. In the end, its chances of doing that are anyone's guess.
BRAC TIMELINE:
The Department of Defense is collecting and analyzing data for the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process. Here's how that process will work:
February 2005: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will submit to Congress any changes in base-closing standards.
March 15, 2005: President Bush will send to the Senate a list of nine nominees to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which will analyze Secretary Rumsfeld's base closure recommendations.
May 16, 2005: Rumsfeld will submit his closure and realignment recommendations to the commission and congressional defense committees. The information also will be published in the Federal Register.
July 1, 2005: The Comptroller General will report to the congressional defense committees on the economic impact of Rumsfeld's recommendations.
Sept. 8, 2005: The base-closure commission will report to the President on its analysis of Rumsfeld's closure and realignment recommendations.
Sept. 25, 2005: Bush will announce whether he approves or disapproves of the commission's recommendations. If he approves, Congress has 45 legislative days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval or the recommendations become law. (Congress can only accept or reject the recommendations together; it cannot change the recommendation on separate closures.)
Oct. 20, 2005: The base-closure commission must submit a revised report to Bush if he disapproves of the first.
Nov. 7, 2005: Bush must approve the revised list of base closures, or the process ends. If he approves a revised list, Congress has 45 legislative days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval or the recommendations become law.
Source: Department of Defense BRAC website (http://www.dod.gov/BRAC)
Maine Aide Climbs Senate Ranks
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - It was the painful electoral defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota that most recently changed Gary Myrick's fortunes in the nation's capital.
"That was hard, very hard," said the 37-year-old Guilford native, who used to work for Daschle. "The election in general was hard. But you have to move forward. You have to play the hand you're dealt."
On election night, Myrick watched the returns with the man he has worked for during the last two years as his closest adviser on the Senate floor, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
Following Daschle's defeat, Reid was elected by his fellow Democratic senators to become the party's leader in that chamber. As Reid's star has risen in American politics, so too has that of Myrick's, who has been made second-in-command to the new Senate leader.
"He basically grew up in the cloakroom," said Susan McCue, Reid's chief of staff, about the room just off of the Senate floor where intense negotiations over legislation often take place.
" For the past two years they've worked seamlessly together on the floor. [Reid has] been dependent on Gary as his right-hand man to help him through the many complicated negotiations that take behind the scenes," McCue said.
53-year-old Marty Paone, who oversees the entire Democratic floor staff and was Myrick's boss when the latter was the floor counsel, said Myrick has risen to the top because of his ability to keep cool under tense situations and build as well as maintain political relationships.
"You have to get along," Paone said. "Your enemy today may be your friend tomorrow."
As Reid's closest adviser on the Senate floor, Myrick has negotiated with Republicans on thousands of bills. But ever since Democrats became the minority, Myrick has had to help his party play smart defense, sometimes using filibusters when needed.
The sense of fair play and bipartisanship that Myrick and his Republican counterparts talk about will be sorely tested if Republicans proceed with a tricky procedural move intended to prevent Democrats from using filibusters to delay or block confirmation of federal judges.
It is one area that Myrick refuses to discuss, saying only, "I'm worried about the institution."
Myrick, who is soft-spoken like his current boss, stands at about 5'10" tall. He is bald on top, and the hair on the sides of his head is closely cropped. If you talk to him long enough, the dry sense of humor for which he's famous seeps through, evidenced by his talk about the car he drives: a blue 1989 Mercedes whale of a car that he bought from a friend and that his friends sometimes rib him about.
"There are some warning lights. It's like a Christmas tree," he said, laughing about the car's mechanical problems. "I'd keep it forever, but my wife has had enough."
Myrick, who is married now and has a 3-year-old son named Henry, was never into college or high school politics when he was growing up. Even so, Myrick abruptly left the University of Maine in 1989 before his senior semester to work for the Maine legislature as a page. It was not so much for politics as it was a way to bolster his odds of getting into law school.
"They've always been OK," he said of his grades, "but they've never been stellar. "So I knew I had to work hard."
That summer he worked at the Mobil gas station by his house, the same one he worked at in high school to earn enough money to buy his first car, a 1966 Mercury Comet, which he bought for $200. "It had low miles but a lot of rust," he said.
By Labor Day, he was heading down to Washington as an intern for one of the nation's foremost political icons, Maine Sen. George Mitchell, the Senate Majority Leader, traveling with a Mitchell staffer who was driving Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie's car down to the capital.
At the end of his internship he came back to the state legislature for another term while finishing college thanks to independent study. Later that spring he took a staff assistant job in Sen. Mitchell's legislative office. This time it was for good.
He would eventually move to Mitchell's leadership office, and then on to his cloakroom staff. While working there, Myrick got into to law school, enrolling in a four-year night program at American University.
It was a degree that that Myrick always thought he would use back in Maine, an idea he hasn't ruled out.
Soon after Mitchell left the Senate in 1995, Myrick graduated from law school. He was promoted to the Senate floor staff by Daschle, who became the Senate's new majority leader, and would work there until he became Reid's floor counsel.
Reid, who is credited with being a parliamentary wiz on the floor, defers to Myrick for the credit.
"All the articles that have been written about how much I know about floor procedures, and I'm a master of the procedures of the Senate. Basically I owe all that to Gary," Reid said. "There isn't anything that I've done that we haven't worked closely on."
As Reid's deputy chief of staff, Myrick's focus will now shift to managing a much larger operation, from hiring, overseeing policy directives and yes, keeping an eye on the Senate floor.
Growing up, politics were a constant topic of discussion around the Myrick household. Gary's father, Warren Myrick, was a library trustee and a member of Guilford's planning board and was active with the county Democratic Party. He was "a joiner," according to Gary's sister, Elizabeth, who also now lives in the Washington area.
Gary Myrick also found special opportunities for his family to see Washington in ways most people never can.
Just a year or two into President Clinton's second term, Myrick secured a ticket to the Senate gallery for his sister to see Clinton give his state of the Union address.
More recently, he brought his sister and parents to Daschle's office balcony in the Capitol. Warren Myrick died last year from a neck injury, and the trip down to see his son would be his last. Gary's mother remembers the occasion vividly.
"It was raining, but I didn't care," Carole Myrick said. "It was just wonderful."
"Coming from Guilford, Maine, that's a pretty amazing experience," Elizabeth Myrick said. "That would be an amazing experience for anyone."
"If things had been different," said Gary's brother, Jeffrey, who lives in Standish, the senior Myrick might have run for the state House. An interest in politics, Gary Myrick's family members say, was something he and his father shared in particular.
David Schiappa, the equivalent to Myrick on the Republican side and who shares a common interest in home renovation with Myrick, praised his temperament and political skills, calling him a friend.
He said that his communication with Myrick is always good, even though they know they are playing for very different teams. "He's an institutional guy," Schiappa said. "I hope he sticks around for a while."
Myrick stresses that in Guilford, where everyone knows everyone else, a person's word is everything. In this regard, the U.S. Senate is not so different from his hometown.
He compared the day-to-day legislative contests with Republicans on the Senate floor to the vintage animated cartoon characters Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog.
After trying to outwit the other all day, the two would stop when the closing whistle blows, clock out and go home.
"The relationship we have with the Republican floor staff is just like that," Myrick said. "They protect their rights, we protect our rights. Fight like hell during the day.
"As stressful as it is, you get to the end of the day and you still have the relationships because you've been honest. And you clock out, and you go home, and you start again the next day."
N.H. Woman Settles Into Capitol Hill Job
By Dennis Mayer
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2004 - Three days into her new job as Rep. Jeb Bradley's press secretary, Stephanie DuBois was settling into life at her new desk, which was pressed against a wall in a five-by-seven room that looked more like a closet than the communications center of a congressional office.
"This is where the magic happens," she said, laughing, of her unassuming new surroundings.
A couple of picture frames and an average assortment of office supplies had been arranged around her computer screen, which she'd set up as she liked it. Her BlackBerry - the wallet-sized wireless device that congressional staffers use outside of the office to keep track of their e-mail - was charging on its stand, waiting for use.
On a ledge, a box of her new business cards sat next to a box of her old ones, the ones that list her old job - deputy press secretary, based out of Bradley's Manchester office.
Her new job includes, but is not limited to, composing press releases about Bradley's work and opinions on various legislation, writing speeches and dealing with inquiries from reporters.
"It's a big move," she said of the new position. "It's something I've always aspired to."
The job is also one known for its difficulties. Aside from the long hours that all congressional staffers work, press secretaries work under the added pressure of being their boss's public voice - a position that subjects them to scrutiny and speculation. Presidential press secretaries have a half-joking tradition of passing down a flak jacket from one secretary to the next, and while congressional press secretaries are not in the spotlight as much as their White House counterparts, the sentiment is similar.
DuBois said she's ready for the job, though, and after her first few weeks in Bradley's office - in which Congress passed a spending bill to fund the federal government next year and worked out a compromise on an intelligence bill - she said she was excited to be part of the lawmaking process.
"I think I've been warned about everything," she said. "The job is challenging, but I thrive on challenges."
DuBois grew up in Goffstown, N.H., the older of two daughters of a 25-year veteran of the police department and a graphics art designer. She said growing up with a father on the police force was fun because the other officers became an extended family for her and her sister as they grew up.
"It's a tight-knit group," she said of the department.
Frank McBride, the principal of Goffstown High School, where DuBois graduated in 1998, said he wasn't at all surprised that DuBois got into politics.
"You can't find enough people like her to get into it," he said.
McBride met DuBois when he was a U.S. History teacher and she was a 17-year-old junior.
"She was clearly at the time one of the most prepared, thorough" students in the class, he said, adding that she displayed a unique blend of "type-A" organizational skills and creativity.
DuBois took those skills to Providence College, where she majored in political science and interned in then-Sen. Bob Smith's office. Her experience there convinced her she might want to consider a career in politics, and after graduating in 2002, she took a job with the New Hampshire State Republican Party.
Jayne Millerick was working for the party as a consultant at the time, and worked with DuBois on the party's get-out-the-vote operation in the three days leading up to the election. (That year, Republicans Craig Benson and John Sununu won the governorship and a U.S. Senate seat, respectively, and Bradley won the U.S. House seat that Sununu gave up for his Senate bid.)
"She does a great job of working with volunteers and supporters of the party," Millerick said. "She has a really stick-to-it attitude."
After that election, DuBois took the deputy press secretary job in Bradley's office.
Jeff Rose, who was then Bradley's district director, was impressed with Dubois.
"I thought she had a very strong work ethic and brought a great amount of creativity to the position," said Rose, who is now the legislative director at Nashua-based BAE Systems.
DuBois also can count her New Hampshire upbringing as a positive, Rose said, because she understands the "values and virtues" of the state and its people.
DuBois said she's excited to be in Washington - she's already seen the botanical gardens and several of the Smithsonian museums. However, she said she still misses her home state.
"I love New Hampshire, and I think eventually I'd like to make my way back up there," she said.
Legislation May Spur More Cell Phone Recycling
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, - Many Americans have a partner they spend most of the day with. The partner helps them take care of business, coordinate plans and keep tabs on their kids. But despite this communication companion's loyal service, most Americans bury it in the closet after about a year and a half, only to make a more sophisticated acquaintance.
Cell phones have seemingly become a necessity in today's society. Wireless subscribers in the United States have climbed from 350,000 in 1985 to almost 175 million.
The number of subscribers, combined with the short life of the phones, means that almost 130 million phones are retired annually in this country. Although some of these phones end up in the trash, which can create environmental hazards, most people choose to store them away, which has created a stockpile of some 500 million phones in the closets, drawers and basements of America, according Inform Inc., an environmental research organization.
Nearly all major wireless industry service providers and phone manufacturers have established voluntary end-of-life collection programs, ranging from mail-in to collection bins in their stores.
A common trend in industry collection programs, especially with service providers, is for proceeds from recycling and sales of refurbished phone to go to charities established by the companies. Two of the largest collection charities are Verizon's HopeLine program benefiting victims of domestic abuse and Donate a Phone, operated by The Wireless Foundation, a non-profit industry organization working with most major wireless companies that raises funds for a variety of charities.
To a smaller extent, independent charities also collect phones.
In addition, independent phone recyclers such as Michigan-based ReCellular, the largest U.S. phone refurbisher and recycler, also accepts phone donations by mail.
ReCellular, which works with a majority of industry collection programs and charities, receives about half its phones for free from independent and wireless industry charity collections, with a portion of the profit from reselling or recycling the equipment returning to those charities, according to ReCellular marketing manager Mike Newman.
The other half are phones returned by customers to phone service providers and manufacturers. Newman said depending on quality, which varies widely, ReCellular will pay about $3 or $4 for a phone that can be refurbished and resold.
ReCellular sells the used phones for $7 to $8 to domestic retailers and service providers in Latin America.
Phones that can't be refurbished and resold, which account for around 30 percent of phones that come in, are sold to companies that harvest them for raw materials and properly dispose of the waste. Cell phones contain some toxic plastics and metals, namely lead used in solder, that if dumped in a landfill can leach into ground water or release hazardous materials when burned.
The revenues generated from selling unusable equipment are usually offset by handling costs, and "we probably break even at best," Newman said. And ReCellular usually has to pay to have some plastics and phone batteries recycled.
The reuse market is certainly the money maker for ReCellular and similar businesses, providing nearly all their profit. Last year ReCellular took in about 4 million phones and had revenue of more than $40 million.
ReCellular has been in business for 14 years, and Newman said incoming collections are expanding but still have great potential for growth: businesses like ReCellular currently collect only three to five percent of the phones retired a year. "It's not a lot.. There are a lot of phones out there that nobody is collecting and nobody is recycling."
Newman said he attributes this to lack of public awareness of phone collection programs. There are some 40,000 drop-off locations in the United States, and "you can recycle your phone without too much effort," he said. "But you have to know that you can do it and you have to be motivated to do it, and that to me is the biggest hurdle right now."
Wireless industry companies don't mention their collection programs in their numerous advertisements. "They really haven't broadly publicized it," said Bette Fishbein, author of "Waste in the Wireless World" and senior fellow at Inform Inc., a non-profit research organization aimed at solving environmental problems.
"I see a real problem in voluntary programs." Fishbein said. "You've got to have targets and you've got to have reporting and you've got to have some consequences if you don't meet these targets."
Fishbein also said that companies must be stakeholders in their products at the end of their useful lives. This will give the companies incentives to make a more easily recyclable product and ensure that it is collected.
Fishbein said the trend of wireless companies' contributing the proceeds from recycling phones to charity is very unusual in the recycling business. "Why, if it's profitable, they don't take a lot more back isn't 100 percent clear," she said. Part of the reason may be because more phones may saturate the reuse market and decrease the value of used phones, she said.
Marcia Simon, a spokeswoman for Verizon's New England region, said every Verizon store collects phones but the company doesn't plan to get into for-profit recycling. "There are so many areas to focus on strategically when you're looking at where you're going to draw your profit from. I think [Verizon] is just focused on other areas." Verizon Wireless has collected phones for charitable causes since the mid-1990s, and HopeLine and related recycling programs run by Verizon have collected more than 2 million used phones since 1995, netting $7.9 million in the last three years for victims of domestic abuse. The company's collection program continues to grow as people slowly learn about it and more people upgrade to newer phones, Simon said.
Despite some criticism of the wireless industry on recycling issues, Newman said that "the industry is waking up to the need to take it more seriously." Both he and Fishbein see European and domestic legislation as an engine driving more recycling.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, drafted by the European Union, went into effect this fall. Producers of electronic equipment must finance the collection, treatment, recovery and disposal of electronic waste. The program will impose the requirements along a sliding scale, and by 2007 producers will have to meet strict targets for recycling electronic waste or face penalties.
Just because companies are required to take back products in Europe doesn't mean they will voluntarily do it in the United States, Fishbein said. But the directive could influence legislation in this country, she said, probably first at the state level.
The Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, also established by the European Union, will require products made after July 2006 to be free of many hazardous substances, including lead, mercury and cadmium, that are found in cell phones.
"The RoHs Directive is probably going to impact how electronic equipment is made around the world," Fishbein said. Phones and electronic equipment are designed to be sold in the global market, and producers don't want to produce two types of products, she said.
The California Cell Phone Recycling Act, signed into law in late September, is the first of its kind in the United States. It requires cell phone merchants to establish collection systems for used phones.
A take-back law being just in California can make a difference, Fishbein said. If just three or four states pass legislation, the wireless industry will respond because it doesn't want to deal with different laws in every state, she said.
"Over the past few years we have looked at different programs that may increase the number of cell phones that we are able to collect," said Craig Liska, corporate director of the international environment, health and safety department at Motorola., a leading manufacturer of cell phones. While some of these programs have had mild success, Liska said, he is aware that most end-of-life phones do not make it to recyclers.
Motorola is experimenting with a new take-back program in which consumers can mail in old phones by printing a prepaid label found on Motorola's Web site.
Liska said Motorola also has been active in refining phone design to reduce weight, incorporate environmental considerations and increase energy efficiency. In the late 1990s Motorola stopped using nickel-cadmium batteries, which pose an environmental risk because of their cadmium content.
"We are currently working on designing new products that will not contain lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium VI and brominated flame retardants that are being banned in Europe in 2006," Liska said.
Motorola continues to look for opportunities to reduce the different types of plastics used in its products, said Juli Burda, a company spokeswoman. "By reducing the number of plastics, we may assist in the recyclers' efforts to produce a cleaner grade of recyclable plastics," she said.
What impact industry initiatives or legislation will have remains to be seen, but when more phones hit the reuse and recycling markets, Newman said, the infrastructure in this country is ready to process them. "We've handled huge spikes in collections before, and we have a very scalable operation. We'd love to get more phones."
###
Snowe to Begin Reelection in Coming Months
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2004 - Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, will begin her reelection campaign in earnest in the coming months despite speculation by some that she may not run for reelection in 2006.
"I can tell you unequivocally that she is running again," said Snowe's chief of staff John Richter. Snowe herself was unavailable for comment.
Even so, Democrats and Republicans alike still point to Snowe's fundraising activities as reasons why the retirement rumor persists. Just after Snowe ran for reelection in 2000, she had approximately $447,000 in campaign funds in the bank.
Now, four years later, Snowe has less money in the bank, not more, with $391,000. "That's what hints toward retirement, frankly," said a Democratic strategist who closely follows Senate races nationwide but asked not to be identified. Her coffers should be filling, not emptying or even staying even, he said, especially given her political stature.
It's almost like she's "trying not to raise money," he said.
According to the same strategist, having such a low cash balance could leave her vulnerable to "self-funded" candidates or to candidates who could raise roughly that same amount with relatively little difficulty.
Maine Democratic Party chairwoman Dottie Melanson said that despite the speculation that Snowe would not run, in the end, the rumor "has not been substantiated at all." As a result, the party will begin thinking sometime in the early part of next year about possible Democratic challengers to run against her.
Snowe will have to raise more than $2 million in the next two years to get to her 2000 fundraising level of $2.5 million. That's an average $2,700 to raise per day. Toward that goal, Snowe recently hired a campaign fundraiser.
Professor Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College, said, "That's not a lot to start with," but others contend that it may be enough because media buys in Maine tend to be inexpensive and Snowe already has high name recognition.
Rep. Tom Allen, the state's senior congressman, has almost as much money as Snowe, with $361,000 in the bank despite having just finished an election campaign.
Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst for CNN and author of the Rothenberg Political Report, said Snowe was close to reaching the status of "political icon in the state" and had few liabilities other than her being from a state where Republicans typically face a harder time than Democrats.
"She's a red-party politician in a blue state," he said. Nonetheless, he said. Snowe's reputation for independence and her long political career made serious opposition unlikely. "She's seen to be in a very solid position for reelection," he said.
Rothenberg said a Democratic operative told him he hoped Democrats would mount some serious opposition, not to defeat Snowe - which the operative did not think could be done -- but "as a way of getting the party energized" to make a serious bid to defeat Sen. Susan Collins, in 2008, which was more of a "four-year plan," Rothenberg said.
Assuming that Snowe runs, someone will have to run against her, and Melanson insisted that the Democrats will be putting up a serious challenger.
Amy Fried, a political science professor at the University of Maine, echoed what many said in interviews - that Democrats will be hard pressed to find someone with enough influence to take Snowe on.
"I think it's going to be hard to attract many strong candidates," said Fried, adding that nobody seems to be jockeying for the position - at least not yet.
In her first reelection effort in 2000, Snowe defeated state Senate President Mark Lawrence, by 69-31 percent. She was first elected to the Senate in 1994..
If Snowe were to decide not to run, her Senate seat would instantly be thrown into contention, with the state's top Democrats - Reps. Allen and Michael Michaud and Gov. John Baldacci - the most logical contenders.
None of them has publicly expressed interest in the job, and the offices of both Allen and Michaud declined comment.
Monica Castellanos, Michaud's press secretary, said Michaud hadn't given the race any thought and was preparing for the new Congress that begins in January. "We're focused on doing the job he was elected to do just last month," she said.
Breast Cancer Research Funding Fails
WASHINGTON 12/9/04-In October, Congress passed legislation that lit the St. Louis Arch pink in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month. The resolution had two sponsors in the Senate and four in the House and was signed into law on Oct.20.
The move elicited an unexpected response from some breast cancer research advocates.
"Since Oct. 20, 3,069 women have died of breast cancer," New Hampshire Breast Cancer Coalition President Nancy Ryan said last month. "Pink lights didn't save any of them."
Congress appropriated more than $4 billion last month for the National Cancer Institute's efforts to save people from various forms of the disease. But that spending did not include funding for a program breast cancer research advocates had been pushing for two years and that had strong support in the House and Senate. Congress did not pass the bill specifically authorizing and appropriating $30 million over the next five years to create eight centers that would study the link between breast cancer and the environment. The bill had 62 sponsors in the Senate and 210 in the House and has been introduced three times in six years.
Hundreds of studies have explored the links between breast cancer and the environment. Many have ruled out a connection between certain chemicals and breast cancer, but researchers, and those who work with patients, said the need for additional funding and research persists.
"A lot of patients, especially the younger women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, the first thing they say is, 'I eat well. I don't smoke. It's got to be the environment,'" said Elizabeth Hale Campoli, a registered nurse and program director at the Breast Care Center in Nashua. "It kind of gets them a little angry. They feel like they've done everything right."
The Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which would establish and fund eight research centers under the direction of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health, has died in committee in the three consecutive sessions since Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) introduced it in 1999. In November, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Democratic leader-designate, "hot-lined" the bill, meaning it bypassed committee and was brought to the Senate floor for a vote that required the Senate's unanimous consent. But opposition from the Republican side prevented its passage.
According to both a Chafee spokesman and breast cancer research advocates who lobbied for the bill, Sen. Judd Gregg blocked it in the committee he chaired. They said that instead, he favored allowing the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute to decide how to spend federal cancer research funds. It was a change that the bill's advocates found unacceptable.
When asked after a recent Senate vote why he opposed the legislation, Gregg said, "I'm not going to comment on that."
Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, which helped develop the legislation, said Gregg has "consistently blocked enactment.even though a bipartisan majority of the Senate supported the bill."
Both Ryan and Hale Campoli also said their requests to meet with Gregg personally on trips to Washington to discuss the bill have been declined for two years in a row.
Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) supported the bill and Reps. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) and Jeb Bradley (R-N.H.) supported the House version.
"We were extremely disappointed that the bill did not move," said Ryan, who, with other members of the New Hampshire coalition, canvassed Capitol Hill during the November lame-duck session to garner support for the bill.
Ryan has been "living with breast cancer," as she puts it, since 1991. Her work at the New Hampshire coalition has been a full-time, unpaid job since she was diagnosed at the age of 41.
Though the numbers have decreased, New Hampshire breast cancer incidence rates are about eight percent higher than the national average and the death rate is slightly higher, according to National Cancer Institute data from 2001, the most recent year available. In that year, 931 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 186 women died from the disease.
Previous and current studies on breast cancer and the environment have been somewhat inconclusive, researchers say, because of the difficulty of measuring the effects of environmental factors.
The largest and most expensive epidemiological study supported by the National Cancer Institute was the Long Island Breast Cancer Study, in a region where breast cancer incidence rates were higher than in other parts of the country. The study compared chemical levels in blood samples of women with breast cancer to those without the disease.
Parts of this study are still under way, but findings released in 2002 showed that there was no correlation between PCBs, including DDT, and increased instances of breast cancer.
"It sounds like a high-possibility prospect, but it hasn't panned out in direct research," said Dr. Linda Titus Ernstoff of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who reviewed the study and thousands of others on the manufactured chemical. "But it could be that we can't measure it well in the blood because it has decreased over time. We can't really take it off the suspect list."
But a chemical known as PAH that is found in grilled foods, engine exhaust and cigarette smoke, did show some effect.
"That finding was not clear-cut to interpret," said Dr. Deborah Winn of the National Cancer Institute, "But the investigators saw something with PAH." She added: "It's always hard to look at the environment and breast cancer. Exposures may have taken place in the past, and it may be hard to measure these exposures."
Because measuring chemical levels in adults has sometimes produced inconclusive results, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences created four centers in 2002 to follow 1,800 six- and seven-year-old girls through puberty to see whether exposures to environmental agents affect speed of development.
The centers, in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, San Francisco and East Lansing, Mich, will also expose animals to chemical agents to see if they affect mammary gland development. Breast cancer research advocates involved in the study will explain the findings to the communities. The Lowey-Chafee bill did not appropriate money for these four centers.
"When we put [the research] together.we can really establish some kind of public policy," said Dr. Jose Russo, lead investigator at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, one of the four centers.
Russo and his counterparts at the other centers said that this study is extensive and unlike any that has taken place. But they added that their research is limited by funding and that additional questions will need to be answered.
"Four centers will scratch the surface about what we need to know about how the environment affects breast cancer," said Dr. Sue Heffelfinger, the lead investigator at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Robert Hiatt, lead investigator at the University of California, agreed and said that with additional funding, the centers could expand the number of girls studied, get more details on their family lives and physical activity and could involve the community more.
"We're likely to uncover more questions, and it would be good to have different centers in different parts of the country," Hiatt said.
For now, early detection remains the best option for controlling breast cancer. The federally funded initiative that New Hampshire calls "Let No Woman Be Overlooked" began in 1997 under this assumption. The program provides free mammograms, pap smears and breast exams to low-income women. According to program coordinator Becky Bukowski, the program exceeded its goal of providing services for more than 3,000 women last year.
"Our ultimate goal is to reduce morbidity and mortality and we do that by enrolling people who wouldn't necessarily go for screening and be screened at an early age," Bukowski said.
The ultimate goal for Ryan, Hale Campoli and other advocates from New Hampshire and across the country who have worked on the bill is to end breast cancer, and they said they think the Lowey-Chafee breast cancer bill is a step in that direction. Rep. Lowey's spokeswoman, Julie Edwards, said Lowey would reintroduce the bill next session. According to Hourahan, Chafee had not made a decision yet.
"We're fighting to end this for all women," Ryan said. "Scientists want to make breast cancer a chronic disease. I disagree. Our goals need to be to learn what is causing so much breast cancer and what we can do to prevent it."
###
Intelligence Bill Passes Senate
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2004 - At times it seemed the intelligence reform bill was destined to fail.
"This was the most difficult bill to bring from conception to birth that I can imagine being involved with," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the bill's sponsor. "That makes the bill doubly satisfying."
After months of intense public and private lobbying, Sen. Collins spoke after the Senate passed the legislation 89-2 and thanked the families of the September 11 terror attack victims as well the bill's supporters in the House and Senate.
"I think one of the bleakest moments was back on Nov. 20, when the four of us had negotiated a very hard fought agreement, and then the Speaker, in deference to two chairmen - and I certainly understand his decision - decided not to proceed with the floor vote," she said. "But that turned out to be just a bump in the road."
Collins sponsored the bill in the Senate with Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. The two key negotiators in the House were Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.
Contending that the bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate means that Congress believes that the reforms will make the country safer, Collins went on to thank her counterparts in both the House and the Senate "for never giving up, for persevering, even when the negotiations were extremely difficult."
Lieberman also breathed a sigh of relief. "This was the most sustained, in many ways most difficult, I know it was the most important legislative experience I've ever had," he said. "I'm just grateful it ended in success."
The bill now goes to the President's desk for his signature.
