These “facts” are not only untrue, but they are meaningless. Delays in the planning process are in fact what has slowed the buildup’s progress and prompted Washington officials to take another look at the situation.
Two recent federal audits help to show this. Only last week, Col. John Jackson ended his service as the head of the Joint Guam Program Office — the on-the-ground driver of the buildup — and the retired Marine officer headed back to civilian life.
Coincidentally, I guess, the General Accounting Office picked the next week to release two reports that shed quite a bit of light on Mr. Jackson’s tenure at JGPO.
First, when the inspector general looked at how money had been spent on the buildup so far, their accountants found plenty of discrepancies, raising questions about the management skills of those in charge of this vast project. “If they can’t manage the check book with millions of dollars, how will they do with billions?” you might ask. However, that’s a fixable Navy problem, though it could slow things down.
But it’s the second GAO audit, which took nearly a year and went to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Appropriations that commands attention as to where the buildup is going.
There’s been a lot of finger-pointing and blaming in Guam, by persons who claim that anything other than total, uncritical support of the buildup by our people is driving the military to go elsewhere.
However, the GAO report reminds the U.S. Senate of the obvious. The Department of Defense has been under congressional orders since 2006 to produce a new draft masterplan for the Guam buildup, but it has failed to do so.
“Congress’ ability to oversee the entire Guam military buildup and make appropriately timed funding decisions is likely to be hampered until DOD completes the plan and provides it to Congress,” the GAO reported.
Much more important to the continuing debate on Guam, when the GAO set out to pin down the problems with the buildup, it did not occur to its analysts to even ask any question of GovGuam officials or Guam residents, so I would put aside any worry that a chance rude word to a Washington visitor will cause DOD to scuttle the entire buildup.
A draft of that long-sought masterplan is now circulating in Washington, with the final version to be released in July; but to my knowledge, no one in the Guam leadership has had as much as a peek at it to date. Unfortunately, that is not unusual.
We may sometimes think so, but Guam is not the center of the universe. This is nothing new, of course. In the run up to the present Record of Decision, we were given the absolute minimum of information needed for residents of Guam, the host community, to figure out whether the buildup would be a “win-win” for all the parties. We had to fight to obtain much of what we got.
As the GAO report indicates, huge portions of the Guam buildup plans remain unclear as Washington decision-makers debate. Major costs and impacts of the buildup have yet to be made clear by their planners, including the proposed Apra Harbor carrier berth, the live fire range in the Route 15 area, the proposed stationing of a defensive missile installation on Guam, and the ongoing Air Force Strike program.
The future of our island depends on this information being made available, promptly and accurately. With new leadership at JGPO and an effective buildup masterplan in place, I am hopeful for our future.
SEN. JUDITH P. GUTHERTZ,
31st Guam Legislature
