Privatization At Walter Reed

The Army Times published a portion of a memo Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi sent to Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

The memorandum “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel,’” the committee’s letter states. “According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The letter said Walter Reed also awarded a five-year, $120-million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers.

Conservative ideologically believes in privatization. The problem is they can't prove it works. What privatization really is about is throwing money at political cronies. Case in point is Al Neffgen.

When he spoke at an employee town hall meeting recently, CEO Al Neffgen of IAP Worldwide Services, Inc. was making a point about customer satisfaction.

For IAP, the customer is the government, and the company’s services range from building Army camps in Iraq to providing ice to US hurricane victims. To Neffgen, a veteran of more than 30 years in government contracting, the point was important. Customer satisfaction matters, especially when a company is growing by acquisition.

The Defense Department's Defense Contract Audit Agency found Halliburton was aware of accounting problems and refused to turn over documents.

"It has come to my attention that DCAA has been denied access to and/or copies of internal audit documents and reports performed on KBR operations," the letter said. "This is of great concern to me and is not in the spirit of open communication, trust and cooperation that we agreed to" at an earlier meeting. The letter was sent by Francis P. Summers Jr., a regional Defense Contract Audit Agency director in Texas, to Al Neffgen, KBR's chief operations officer.

An off-the-record Halliburton official said that the documents were confidential. The official implied that an audit may violate the law. Halliburton believes the taxpayer doesn't have the right to know if the company is providing proper services in Iraq. Neffgan defended the overbilling in testimony to Congress. Mr. Neffgen has interesting ideas about keeping the customer happy.

In Bizaaro World, David Bernstein blames public health care for Walter Reed's problems.

If private companies had mismanaged outpatient care for veterans the way the V.A. system has, there would be strong calls from all the usual quarters for a government takeover, and proclamations of how we can't trust "greedy" for-profit companies to take care of veterans. Funny how this thought process doesn't seem to work in reverse, except among "free market ideologues," who have been criticizing the V.A. for years.

It is hard to believe Bernstein made it through law school.