________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
I served in the Office of the ACE from '79 to '80, as the Deputy ACE. I was the first of the
brigadier Deputy ACEs before the job went away. I just happened to go there as the colonel
deputy and was selected for brigadier general, and General Morris left me there for the year,
so we had two flag officers playing in the arena.
Because that's really a tough job over there when you have to go up here before four
committees, as the ACE does, and you have to attend all the Select Committee and Program
Budget Committee meetings, the poor ACE finds himself coming and going.
So, it was awfully nice for General Bill Read at the time to go work the committees, and I
would work the Program Budget Committee. Thus, he didn't have to be coming back from
testimony to be handed a bunch of documents to go sit in the Program Budget Committee
meeting until eight o'clock at night, whereby they'd hand him his testimony for the next
morning for the next appearance before Congress.
There's plenty of work in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Engineers for two folks.
At that time, there was some tension between Military Programs and the ACE's office
because, in fact, we in the ACE were carrying the programming ball for housing and for
facility engineering. Those aspects both came under the then-Military Programs, who had
their own brigadier general, and the people over in the Pulaski Building. The ACE was all
over at the Pentagon.
So, there were tensions because we always had our own MCA programmers who had all the
answers. Then we'd have this big, apparent void, you know, in housing. So, we weren't
developing a full plate of answers or positions.
That was structurally fixed later when they moved programmers from those other offices
over into the ACE programs. Certainly, our facilities funding understanding and ability to
articulate issues is much better because of that.
There's a very separate difference between the ACE and his role as the Army's programmer
and his installations staff role, and the Director of Military Programs, who is the Corps'
executor of those missions the Army gives USACE for construction.
Now, over the last couple of years that has been broadened, of course, with the growth of our
environmental programs and our defense effort to solve environmental problems. Maybe
there's been a little tension grown there because we have the environmental office, which
works for the ACE, as he did way back when. With Military Programs that environmental
part has now grown.
So, there might be some tension there, as we work that out. We've been trying for some time
now to make some organizational changes with regard to the environment, and that hasn't yet
come out of the secretariat because some of the folks over there are working their own
agendas. There are still some battles ahead to sort all that out.
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