The House voted on Wednesday to overturn the Clinton administration's effort to privatize operations at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and McClellan Air Force base in California.
On a 304-120 vote, the House passed the $268 billion 1998 Defense authorization bill (HR 1119), which includes a provision requiring that the two bases be shut down and not simply turned over to private control.
During the last election cycle, Clinton, in an effort to avoid the loss of jobs at these bases, directed that private firms be allowed to assume work at Kelly and McClellan in a process known as privatization-in-place.
Several members of Congress, upset at what they viewed as a short-circuiting of the base-closing process on Clinton's part, introduced provisions that would provide for the transfer of the work at the California and Texas facilities to existing DoD maintenance centers in Utah, Oklahoma and Georgia.
Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala, unsuccessfully tried to thwart his fellow members' efforts by introducing an ammendment to delete the provisions of the bill that would require Clinton to shift the work to other DoD facilities.
The Everett amendment also would have required the Defense Department to maintain its current policy of a 60/40 percent split of repair and maintenance work between Defense depots and private facilities.
Instead, the bill was passed with a provision that would exclude certain maintenance and repair projects from the 60/40 limitation.
The American Federation of Government Employees has long fought privatization-in-place, contending that it has "calamitous consequences for federal employees."
The bill will be considered by the Senate after the July 4 recess.
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