Even the USDA grudgingly admitted it had been a "challenging transition period." A former Plum Island official described the transition with a bit more flavor. He calls it "the biggest clusterfuck you ever saw in your life."
Like he did with the ferry debacle, Congressman Hochbrueckner complained again, saying privatization "was handled poorly. The workers were treated shabbily." For a politician who publicly bemoaned the woes of Plum Island numerous times, he accomplished surprisingly little. Says Dr. Breeze of Hochbrueckner's rants, "He said, 'I'm going to block it,' and that was just disingenuous at best. He knew quite well the way privatization worked. He knew exactly what was going to happen."
The congressman wasn't the only one feigning powerlessness. "I wanted the government to hold a series of meetings where you explained to the workers the process under way," explains Dr. Breeze. "Absolutely nobody would do that and it wasn't up to me to do it. I actually couldn't get it done." Those meetings never happened. Breeze says he had nothing to do with the privatization or the transition, though the record clearly indicates the opposite. He could have, like Dr. Callis before him, warded off the A-76 guillotine by invoking the "overriding factors" exception, based on the island's unique risks and unfathomable dangers among federal facilities. After all, Plum Island was no run-of-the-mill federal office building, where you'd apply for a passport or pick up a Social Security check. "When Dr. Callis was there, we had the rigid safety standards that almost made it impossible for the contractor to bid," says a longtime Plum Island scientist. "And they could have applied for an exemption this time around, but they didn't."
Retired Plum Island scientists Drs. Jim and Carol House believe without question that Breeze had the power to halt the privatization steamroller. "He could have stopped it, prevented it," says Jim. "Oh yeah, absolutely." Carol adds, "The next time [privatization] came up, [Breeze] threw in all of the inside support services, so it became a big enough 'plum' to bid on — he reengineered the [PWS] so that more was included. He personally did that." "We said from day zero that this is a place that should not be contracted out," continues Jim House. "It can't be — there are just too many concerns." Despite their beliefs now, Plum Island scientists remained silent, instead of speaking out to fight the process. As a result, many of the support workers, says union leader Ed Hollreiser, felt betrayed.
As one employee said, "All it took was the swipe of a pen" to prevent Plum Island from being contracted out. But Dr. Breeze kept his pen in his pocket protector.
When asked why he wanted to see the government lose the bid, John Boyle replies, "Because I felt at that time — the neophyte that I was — that getting into the private sector would save money and that [the contractor] would get rid of the riffraff, and it would run more efficiently for less money." The USDA, indeed, trumpeted the Plum Island privatization. They said contracting out to Burns & Roe would save taxpayers $1 million a year, and that support costs would decline by $5 million, or 20 percent, over the length of the contract.
Not everyone thought it would be a financial windfall, however. One prescient senior employee told a newspaper, "There will be cost overruns, and eventually it will cost more than it did with the people they laid off." Later, it would be learned that the PWS grossly underestimated the required material and manpower to run Plum Island.[40]
After Burns & Roe came in, John Boyle was let go, the contractor having no need for his services. But eight months later, the contractor begged the financial wizard to come back because things were spiraling out of control. When he returned, Boyle didn't find a mess — he found nothing. "They had no accounting system to speak of. They had hired a bookkeeper who did not know what cost accounting was. I built a new accounting system there, from the ground up." And when he finished his task, he delivered some bad news. "They were over $1 million in the red. I knew about it two or three weeks before, when I started seeing the signs, and I was thinking, 'Jesus, this isn't going to turn around.' They wanted to shoot me."
In most organizations, taking out the trash, tending the grounds, mowing the lawns, and providing clerical support seem like responsibilities that should be handled by a contractor. But Plum Island is not your typical institution. Positions like firefighters, security guards, ferry operators, engineers, incinerator operators, ventilation system operators, electric operators, nitrogen freezer caretakers, power monitors, and sewer decontamination plant operators hold seriously heightened responsibilities. At the home of the most dangerous germs known to man, even the grounds crew and typists must be specially trained and abide by complicated guidelines. Ed Hollreiser comments, "My take is that management was so poor, contracting out would be an easier way to go. This way, they could yell at someone now besides themselves. They could hold [a contractor] accountable and blame them for all the mishaps."
A USDA laboratory in Ames, Iowa, was also put out for privatization at this time. Though the Ames lab houses far less dangerous germs, the staff there, surprisingly, remained under federal government control. And it remains in federal hands today. In August 2003, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin fought off a renewed push to privatize Ames by introducing legislation barring non-governmental workers at the laboratory. He called Ames's research "a vital function of the federal government, and it should remain the responsibility of federal employees." There seems to be no other reason for this glaring inconsistency between the two laboratories than the personal wishes of a director looking to slash nonresearch costs and yoke his workforce. Breeze muses, "It's sort of surprising that Ames hasn't gone out to a contractor. I think it will eventually go to a contractor — it's just a push that various administrations do to different degrees."
Privatization resulted in federally trained, highly skilled workers with decades of experience being bartered away in exchange for a cost-cutting, efficiency-driven private contractor. But on paper, it looked good, and the credit redounded to Plum Island's director, Dr. Breeze. Most important for Breeze, it freed up more funds for science, his primary goal. At least that's how it was supposed to go.
Back in 1965, Jerry Callis described his island laboratory at an international conference by saying, "Safety is uppermost in our minds in everything we do." If that meant less money for science, then so be it. Some three decades later, costs, not safety, were uppermost in management's minds. With the support staff slashed by 40 percent, and the Breeze team cutting every support line item, some other details — like biological safety and security — were compromised. For starters, the two-day Plum Island orientation course, after which new employees were ordered to study a three-inch-thick safety manual as if it were the Bible, was now boiled down to a forty-minute VHS tape and a two-page flyer. The "Nothing Leaves" policy was abandoned. Vehicles and items trafficked among the two laboratory buildings, Long Island, and Connecticut without being decontaminated at all. Contractors, who once had to be escorted ("The escort had to take a shower with these men, take their cigarette breaks with them, even go into the bathroom with them," remembers one), now roamed free.[41] The color-coded badge system was discontinued, and the identification numbers disappeared. Against the advice of an outside consulting firm, the five-man full-time professional fire department was converted to one firefighter and a bucket brigade of volunteers.[42]
40
For example, the PWS estimated 43 vehicles, 15 daily ferry trips, 50 biological air filters, and 75 meals. In actuality there were 51 vehicles to operate, 24 ferry trips to make, 98 air filters to regularly maintain and replace, and 135 meals to prepare.
42
An outside consulting firm hired to evaluate the Plum Island Fire Department recommended three options to Dr. Breeze: buy new equipment and retain the full-time professional department; retain the outmoded equipment and the department; or buy new equipment and institute a volunteer brigade of workers performing other functions. The firm stated that the volunteer brigade, while the cheapest, was "the worst of the three options." Dr. Breeze chose that option. After one fire alarm went off under his reorganized fire department, Dr. Breeze was thoroughly disgusted — with his own choice — as reflected in an internal memo blasting a supervisor: "An ill-assorted group of people drift up wearing various items of clothing, but usually not the firefighter turnout gear we went [through the trouble] to provide, and mill about without apparent discipline or leadership."