Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
operations FTE allocation that year. Therefore, they were going to give us a midyear cut--I
mean, some sizable number, like 60 FTEs.
We answered, after doing the homework, "Wait a minute. You're not reading the charts
right." It was not a linear chart. We are talking about a chart line that is flat at the beginning
and then ramps up come spring and summer when we use most of these funds. Figure out
when the fiscal years are and recognize that we start bringing on temps to work in our
recreation areas in the late spring time frame. We start bringing on people to augment our
work crews out doing summer work on the locks, the dams, during that same time frame.
It was not a linear relationship. That is, you don't plot that we use everybody straight-lined,
one for one all year long. The fact that the USACE staff was measuring in January says that
they should not be measuring up at the straight part of the curve. It would be down on our
projection. Our argument was, "Don't measure against what you thought we should do,
which we think was erroneous. Measure against what we thought we would do when we
asked you for those FTEs and you gave them to us."
The answer came back, "You will never, ever use them." We said, "Oh, yes, we will use
them. We've got plans to use them. They're right in our projection."
I mean, we diddled with them at the staff level for weeks. Then we got to Bory, and Bory
didn't support us, and John Wall, the director, brought me in and said, parroting what Bory'd
said, "You'll never use them." I said, "Oh, yeah, we will." He finally said, "I'll bet you you'll
never use them," and I said, "I'll take that bet."
So, at the end of the fiscal year, turns out we used them. Except they never changed their
numbers. [Laughter]
The interesting thing was that the Office of Management and Budget called the Corps on the
carpet for overusing their spaces that year. I don't remember what the numbers specifically
were, but it might be on the order of 10 over. We'd used 60, so the other folks had fallen
short and not used theirs, and therefore we'd used basically the rest of the Corps' allocation.
So, Civil Works had responded through Gianelli as to why USACE had gone over.
About the same time there was some sort of a personnel newsletter that goes out to all federal
agencies, and it basically said: "Use them or lose them. Only four agencies used their
allocation this year. Plaudits to X, Y, Z, and the Corps of Engineers for fully using their
capability." Then it listed all those other agencies that shot way below their number.
So, I called up John Wall and told him, "You received the compliments of the newsletter. I
hope you accept that. When you write Gianelli back, just say we didn't count very well, or
whatever. [Laughter]
Nevertheless, you received compliments for having the foresight to plan and be very close." I
mean, what's the difference between 10 over versus not using to serve your country 200 man-
years of effort? In the Ohio River Division we used the man-years of effort to good avail in
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