This is the
start of the documentation stream for the GSA Freedom of Information Act
request, all 44 pages of it so far. This is the FOIA from Nov. 4 of last year that
the agency wanted to charge me over $10K to fulfill. Based on the invoice for charges,
there was a $580 duplication fee, which should translate to just under 6,000
pages of documents since the first 100 copies are free and additional pages are
10 cents a page. The balance of the threatened fees was for associated labor
and review, which would essentially mean that GSA is claiming that they
were/are paying someone to work the equivalent of two full months of 40-hour
weeks at $29/hr to review the materials I requested. It seems rather fishy that
there would be that much documentation generated or that it would require that
much work to review. Hmm, it couldn’t be a punitive fee to discourage pursuit
of the information, could it? And all we
have so far is a paltry 44 pages. I suspect that the GSA documentation will be
critical, but I also suspect that they will be dishonest and stingy with what
is actually released, all in the interests of keeping secrets and covering for
the bureaucratic apathy and incompetence endemic within the federal government.
As a
review, the worksheet/invoice is here: http://goo.gl/2z9yM2.
The GSA later
claimed to waive the fees assessed to me when the agency received a similar
FOIA request from Danielle Ivory of the NY Times. The request has been reclassified
as a media FOIA at this point and Ms. Ivory now has control of the request and
its fulfillment. Apparently the information will continue to be released in
segments, as agreed upon by GSA and the NYT writer. I spoke at length with Ms.
Ivory about STORIS on two occasions late last year and I have continued to send
her updates. Hopefully, the details will merit some kind of story.
These
issues with the GSA FOIA are discussed in previous posts. The context &
submitted documents on Feb 3, 2014, the invoice for $10,266 – March
8, 2014,
and the waiver of fees granted for FOIA because of a media request – April
2, 2014.
The release cover letter sent
to Danielle Ivory (copied to me) is here: http://goo.gl/Fu7YFS
The released documents are
here: http://goo.gl/P4vnOa
GSA claims that there are no records
for “copies of internal records and communications that were used to justify
GSA’s decision to abandon discussions with the nonprofit STORIS Museum and Last
Patrol Museums, whose expressed intentions were to obtain the ex-USCGC STORIS
through the public benefit conveyance option of GSA disposal procedures for
historic preservation and use as a training vessel for US Naval Sea Cadets and
US Navy League Cadets.”
While the majority of the correspondence
with GSA was handled by telephone by Jim Loback of the STORIS Museum, it is hardly believable that there are no GSA records
or notes to be found related to any communications with STORIS Museum or any internal discussion to abandon efforts to preserve
the ship. There were, indeed, internal decisions made within GSA to get rid of
the ship without concern for her preservation, some of which are alluded to in
the released 44 pages of documents. Common sense and known facts from our end would
indicate that GSA is being dishonest. There is no surprise there.
Despite a
clear requirement in the bidding criteria for the ship for a Certificate of
Financial Responsibility, GSA also claims that it does not have any documentation
related to COFR requirements, instead forwarding the request to the Coast
Guard. It’s been pointed out several times already how helpful and forthcoming
the Coast Guard has been in providing information related to STORIS and her
excessing and disposal (sarcasm). We are still awaiting information from the
original Coast Guard request as well as approval for release of information
referred to the Coast Guard by MARAD.
The
documents released on September 30 largely consist of correspondence between property
disposal manager Heather Bischoff of GSA and Jeff Beach, a civilian excess
property manager at Coast Guard HQ. The correspondence (correctly) reflects a
strong belief within the Coast Guard and GSA that no other state or federal
agency would be interested in taking the ship through the GSA disposal process.
This correspondence also involves Dr. Daniel Koski-Karell of the Environmental Management Division at CG HQ. Dr. Koski-Karell is no stranger to
maritime heritage or the National Register with his professional
accomplishments. His father was also a Navy veteran who served as the assistant
director of construction programs for the Pacific Coast, including Alaska and he was also a Michigan native, as well. STORIS should have
been appreciated as a product of Toledo and as an Alaskan legend. Dr.
Koski-Karell was our contact within the Coast Guard who handled the NR
nomination for STORIS, supposedly hand carrying it through the process to the
National Park Service to facilitate her listing. So much for professional
consideration of the ship’s history after all the effort we put into nominating
the ship for National Register listing.
It’s very clear
that historic preservation and saving STORIS was of no concern for the government
parties involved, whether it was the Coast Guard or GSA. The primary
consideration was getting rid of STORIS as soon as possible to allow the Coast
Guard to get out from under the $50,000 in annual storage fees it was paying to
store the ship among the MARAD fleet at Suisun Bay. In fact, while the listing for the
National Register of Historic Places is acknowledged, the GSA manager, Heather
Bischoff, is elated to announce that GSA discovered the Memorandum of Agreement
between the Coast Guard and the Alaska State Historic Preservation Office. The
MOA discussion starts around page 17. This MOA, signed in late 2006 through the
requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,
gave the federal government the go-ahead at that time to decommission the ship
once she was extensively photographed and documented through the Historic
American Engineering Record (HAER). This process was completed in 2006. Once
the MOA was signed, it acknowledged that the ship could ultimately be destroyed
by the decommissioning and retirement process, despite the recognition of her
historic significance with a determined eligibility at that time for listing on
the National Register. (The Coast Guard never undertook the nomination process.)
Even though STORIS was later officially recognized as nationally significant with
her December 31, 2012 listing on the National Register, GSA and the Coast Guard
abandoned transfer discussions with STORIS Museum, choosing instead to fall back
on that 2006 MOA to facilitate and expedite the excessing and sale of the ship
from federal ownership. The government did not care about the ship’s history
and the MOA was their “get out of jail free card.” This is, as I suspected, the
reason that GSA stopped talking with Jim Loback of the STORIS Museum. Bureaucratic apathy and laziness
won out over righteous, honorable and responsible stewardship of a federally
owned property of national historic significance. While it may have been legal,
it was certainly not moral or ethical.
The MOA is
appendix D of the Environmental Assessment document to decommission STORIS and
ACUSHNET. It can be viewed here: http://goo.gl/D14Y7e.
The
tremendous waste of a noble, magnificent and nationally significant historic
ship aside, it is outrageous that the Coast Guard spent upwards of $300,000 to
maintain STORIS on donation hold for six years at Suisun Bay, only to dump her (illegally)
ASAP through GSA for $70,100 to U.S. Metals Recovery, the so-called “metals
recycling firm” listed in California as a used car dealer. Coast Guard and GSA
officials knew there were TWO viable nonprofits that wanted the ship after the
Coast Guard had been directed to keep the ship on donation hold for all those
years. No one in the federal government can argue that the sale of the ship
under those circumstances effectively and responsibly recouped the government’s
expenditures or honored the intention of preserving the ship following her
decommissioning. Yes, the money stayed within the government, being transferred
between the Coast Guard and MARAD, but that was still taxpayer money being
shifted and wasted. The economic and cultural loss of STORIS as a museum ship
and training vessel is beyond measure thanks to these bureaucrats.
It is
important to remember that GSA should never have been involved with the
disposal of STORIS (or ACUSHNET or the original MACKINAW) as all three ships
displace more than 1,500 tons. Federal law (40 USC 548) mandates that ships
exceeding 1,500 tons must be disposed of through the U.S. Maritime
Administration.
Another key
federal regulation that the government violated with the STORIS excessing was
Section 3502 of the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act of 2009.
This requires that all former U.S. government ships are to be recycled
domestically in the U.S. In reviewing the GSA
correspondence, it appears that GSA utilizes an electronic database system to
list excess property. It would appear that the requirements of the Duncan
Hunter provision are not part of the “drop-down” menu system that forms the
listing of properties and were therefore never considered because it wasn’t
part of the pre-formatted computer layout. This scenario demonstrates and
reinforces GSA’s apathy and incompetence (with Coast Guard officials in major
supporting roles) in that the officials seem to have been paralyzed when they
couldn’t get the computer to accept what they were entering into the system. It
speaks volumes when there is no distinction between an old filing cabinet and a
nationally significant historic ship based on what the computer system will or
won’t accept. Just because the computer didn’t recognize the Duncan Hunter
provision doesn’t excuse these bureaucrats from violating federal law, however.
Pg 38 starts discussion about excessing 55-foot aids to navigation boats from the Coast Guard inventory. Jeff Beach makes a comment about listing STORIS, “all 230 feet of her.” So he acknowledges her size is substantial in relation to the other vessels to be excessed.
Seriously,
if this is the quality and quantity of information that is going to come out of
GSA, there are some serious questions that need to be pressed on them. For the
$10,266 they wanted to charge me, I would have expected to see documents
revealing the truth behind JFK’s assassination and a copy of Barack Obama’s
real birth certificate. So far, this is nothing but the same message stream
repeated several times. It’s also taken 11 months to get just 44 pages of
materials. This, again, from the “most transparent government in U.S. history,” a government that is wholly
content with destroying STORIS, a major contributor to that very history.
