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Wednesday, February 4, 1998

Air Force research base takes budget hit under Clinton plan

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- A Brooks Air Force Base research unit would lose more than half its $35.8 million budget and at least 100 civilian jobs under President Clinton's budget proposal, an Air Force general says.

Maj. Gen. Richard Paul, commander of the Air Force Research Lab, said two of seven research areas in the Human Effectiveness Directorate would be virtually eliminated if Congress approves the president's proposed budget for fiscal year 1999.

"They will essentially go away," Paul told the San Antonio Express-News in Tuesday's editions.

The directorate studies how military personnel interact with the weapons they control. Air crew physiology and manpower, personnel and training technology are the research areas that would be cut, Paul said.

Four other areas would be preserved and a fifth would be relatively unscathed under a proposed $1.17 billion Air Force science and technology research budget plan.

The president's budget still must face congressional scrutiny.

The fiscal 1999 budget takes effect Oct. 1.

Though every Air Force research installation took a budget hit in the proposal, Paul said Brooks sustained higher cuts than the average 7 percent throughout the lab system.

Last fall, Brooks stood to lose one-fifth of a proposed $250 million cut for the Air Force science and technology budget, a figure base officials said would have eliminated 472 jobs at Brooks.

Some San Antonio civic leaders have credited Paul with sparing Brooks the deeper cuts.

One Brooks psychologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Express-News he believed fellow workers at the base would respond "very negatively" to the budget proposal because they couldn't predict how it would affect them or their research.

Paul, however, said Brooks workers "shouldn't panic in terms of thinking this is one step in forcing Brooks out of business."

"That is absolutely not the intent and not the direction we are heading," he said.

Brooks, which employs 4,405 military and civilian workers, is one of four Air Force bases in San Antonio. It narrowly escaped shutdown during base closure commission votes in 1995.

Kelly Air Force Base, one of the city's largest employers, was targeted for realignment and is set to close in 2001.