Park Service controversy over outsourcing

At San Juan National Historic Site, Edwin Colon has been toiling under the Puerto Rican sun.

Talking on the phone during a break, he describes how he and a group of stone masons have been packing mortar into 2.7 miles of crumbling garrison walls erected 400 years ago by Spanish Conquistadors as a way to fortify New World trade routes.

According to his job description with the US National Park Service, Mr. Colon, generically speaking, is a maintenance man, which means he's now vulnerable to replacement.

Under a plan crafted by the Bush administration to farm out potentially more than 400,000 federal civil-service jobs, Colon's position could soon be offered to low-bidding laborers from the private sector willing to work more cheaply.

Within the Park Service alone, he is among thousands of career employees wearing ranger uniforms whose jobs are being considered for outsourcing as part of an unprecedented push to privatize federal jobs deemed "commercial" in nature.

Wednesday, what was once a relatively obscure domestic policy issue for the Bush Administration, has now become a heated debate.

Crafted by the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) - the fiscal nerve center of government - outsourcing is central to Mr. Bush's belief that the free market can deliver public services more efficiently than the federal bureaucracy.

The plan also figures within the president's campaign pledge to shrink the size of government. But after 9/11, which resulted in thousands of new airport-security jobs being added to the federal payroll, observers say Mr. Bush's advisers have been more aggressively seeking to offset those gains through outsourcing and downsizing.

"Between Democrats and Republicans, we are already seeing evidence of office-to-office fighting over the issue of competitive outsourcing, and the debate is going to go down to the wire this fall as the government sets its budget for next year," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in Washington, D.C.

Two years ago, the Park Service became a prime target for privatizing some civil- service jobs after the president's former OMB director, Mitch Daniels, referred to it "as the world's largest lawn-care service." In addition to riling agency defenders, Daniels' characterization has rankled historians, archaeologists, maintenance workers, and rangers who could be supplanted.

"While it is perfectly appropriate to seek the lowest bidder for [making] the uniforms our park employees wear or the equipment they use, seeking the lowest bidder to replace their expertise and experience is wrong," warns Congressman Nick Rahall (D) of West Virginia who is leading a largely partisan push to halt the effort.

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