Nobody Asked Me, But …

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The Case for Public Affairs

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Maybe.

But—as a public relations profes­sional in the Coast Guard’s public af­fairs program—if you’re doing your job, and nobody knows you’re doing it, will you be doing it for long? Probably not—especially if you’re working for the government, because nobody is going to fund you.

Funding is the Coast Guard’s

dearly—in cash—because the public perception transfers itself naturally to Congress, which pays the bills. The Coast Guard continually keeps a stiff upper lip and yields in docile, if profes­sional, fashion. What else can it do?

The Coast Guard must move out of the shadow of the DoD and establish its own name with the public. This can be done with a vibrant, professional, active public relations program.

The Coast Guard has one distinct marketing advantage over other ser­vices: its missions are a public relations

The Coast Guard’s daily business is the stuff of the six o’clock news—but does Coast Guard public affairs have the training and support to get the job done?

chronic problem. Unlike its bigger cousins in Department of Defense, the Coast Guard is neither an insurance policy against war nor a trump card when conflict occurs. The Coast Guard plate brims in peacetime—from search- and-rescue and law-enforcement mis­sions to aids-to-navigation and ever-in­creasing marine-safety responsibili­ties—but when the Coast Guard seeks the resources to do that work, it Finds itself cut and cut again.

Why? In the public’s mind, the Coast Guard is one with the Navy, and this perception costs the Coast Guard

bonanza. Poised on the cutting edge of exciting search-and-rescue, environ­mental response, and law enforcement, the Coast Guard’s daily business is the stuff of the front page and six o’clock news. Ordinarily unencumbered by na­tional security concerns, the Coast Guard is usually open and forthcoming with the media.

Coast Guard public affairs thinking leans toward media relations and away from the internal media that tradition­ally provide the training for its in-house writers and photographers. This may be a wise use of scarce resources, but

without practical media training, inter­nal media are the only hands-on train­ing platforms available, and without comprehensive, hands-on training, pub­lic affairs specialists cannot hope to ex­ecute a caliber of work that can be placed in even smaller media outlets that thrive on “canned” material from places like the Coast Guard. If a public affairs specialist has never written, shot, or edited, how can he or she see from the perspective of the bigger and more successful market writer, shooter, or editor?

Training takes time, and many Coasi Guard commanders seem unwilling to wait, measuring public affairs staff ef­fectiveness in the short term. Instead of asking the usual questions—“How much time and ink did we get in the local media today?” or “How is the given story playing?”—commanders should be concerned with long-term questions such as, “How well do my PAs know the local media market(s)?’’ “What do the media reps think of my PAs as professional peers?” and most important, “Do the media show a grad­ually increasing grasp of the Coast Guard’s missions and importance, both nationally and locally?”

If the public affairs program has built a proper foundation—which can only be done if its practitioners can speak as peers with the media—the sto­ries or issues a senior commander wants “sold” will be an easier “sell.”

Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has been making choices that make the building of such a relationship more and more difficult. For instance, many recent Coast Guard actions have undef' cut public affairs effectiveness:

►Combining writing and photography under the single enlisted rate of public affairs specialist.

►                  Cutting the public affairs rating to fewer than 100 billets.

►                  Making overtures toward wiping on¹ internal publications, at least at the di^s' trict level.

►Choking off the acquisition of new Macintosh computers, the de facto stn¹¹ dard in the public affairs program and the single tool which, if pursued ag­gressively, could serve both print and

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Within the operational aspects of the Military, this appears to be a perfectly jjatural progression; after all, public af- ^airs is an enlisted Coast Guard rate. ^uMic affairs, however, is not like °'her rates—as anyone schooled and ^e'perienced in journalism, public rela- ^t|Qns, or an allied field knows. The per- foi

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fo?^raphcr and journalist, a practice the _t ^avy still follows. Neither Navy rate Quires a four-year degree, but the nar- _e^0vver playing field permits practition- I^{rs to} pursue technical expertise, offer- _c ® Petty officers a fighting chance at i^Petence. This is especially visible

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^ Eliminating several independent pub­lic affairs petty officer billets.

^ Eliminating the public affairs striker Program.

^ Paring public affairs budgets to the Point where meaningful travel and 'raining are virtually impossible.

The normal public affairs career ^c°Urse takes an individual after his or tar first duty station to the Defense In­formation School for the basic journal- ^lsm course. Selection for the basic ^c°urse is based on written scores as '''ell as interviews performed by public affairs officers at field units, usually a ^•strict office. Course graduates have a Srasp of the basics in writing, photog­^raPhy, and production and are expected ^to fulfill the multiple roles of writer, Photographer (still and video), and ^edia liaison.

'finance of most rates is easily mea- %ed—poorly maintained machinery, ^;,l% prepared food, or ill-kept records j^eVeal themselves sooner rather than ^ater. Poor public affairs performance,

°fi the other hand, is more subtle, em- P'fical, and more subjective. Decreas­es public affairs effectiveness does not Enounce itself; it burgles. A burglar’s ^a,rU is to cost you money—and so does ^°°r public affairs.

Today’s Coast Guard public affairs ^fleers are found wanting—their writ- !^I'S and photography skills would not I ^eeP a majority employed at even entry ^e'^el i_n (he commercial media—and it * ⁿ°t their fault. In the civilian sector, filing, photography, cinematography, ^ media relations are each distinct Professional careers—professional, as college degree required. The Coast

^Ce- Print journalism, too, has under- ^ne a revolution, and technical as well H ^ehitorial knowledge should be the ^|T'- Coast Guard public affairs spe- hsts are not getting this training in numbers sufficient to make it useful.

If the Coast Guard insists on using enlisted personnel for work that the pri­vate sector sees as requiring a college degree—and with too few practition­ers—the rate can’t afford less-than-out- standing achievers. And the most effec­tive way to ensure top achievers is by guarding the gate. This will not be as hard as it sounds, if the selection process gets the attention it deserves.

Discerning who has the right stuff is usually the duty of the closest non-col­lateral public affairs officer to an aspi­rant’s unit who interviews candidates.

A few public affairs officers are for­mer PAs themselves and have a grasp of what public affairs is all about.

More commonly, however, a public af­fairs officer is schooled in leadership and the sciences and steps into these billets with no experience except the Public Affairs Officer’s Course. Noth­ing has prepared these officers to eval­uate prospective public affairs petty of­ficers. Rather than a tool to determine the best applicants, the interview be­comes a defense to weed out the least qualified—a kind of Total Quality Management in reverse. Officers inex­perienced in the public relations and public affairs profession, but exposed to the military culture, are understand­ably reluctant to short-circuit aspira­tions, and when “Don’t hold anyone back” is dogma, some young people get in the public affairs rate with too little aptitude, undergo inadequate training, and are then sent to field commands where too few PAs are try­ing to do too much. It happens at many places but is especially apparent in independent billets, where a single petty officer is expected to shoulder an entire public affairs program—one rea­son for the perceived failure and im­pending elimination of several inde­pendent billets.

The Coast Guard should revive the photographer’s mate rate, including both still and motion pictures in its scope. The fact that photography is going digital only reinforces the logic of having the photographer’s mate rate, because digital technology makes it more possible for technicians to create a product that meets the standards of the commercial media—as long as they are not required to show aptitude in writing as well, which demands a dif­ferent talent and has a much longer learning curve.

The Coast Guard should employ pro­fessional writers and editors. This may require reaching into the civilian sector, but the recognition of writing and edit­ing as professions—not technical skills—may reap powerful long-term rewards.

The Coast Guard should abolish the existing public affairs rate and institute a program similar to those for Coast Guard recruiters and special agents.

Make mid-range enlisted rank an appli­cation requirement and establish a meaningful interview-and-screening process. Instead of sending successful candidates to the basic journalism course, offer a short and intense course, followed by an internship with a media outlet, preferably a small newspaper or television station.

Few rates require as much in-depth understanding of an outside profession as public affairs. If the selection process is sufficient, candidates will perform well at the small media outlets, which will be grateful for the help. Proper monitoring during internship will ensure that candidates obtain the skills and perspective they need. In three to six months, these “media non­rates” will encounter real-world experi­ence the basic journalism course cannot duplicate, and they will be far better equipped for public affairs work—espe­cially media relations—than they are now. Considering as well the added maturity it gains by choosing more se­nior candidates, this new force could conceivably perform more with fewer people. That would be especially true if labor-saving devices such as the Macin­tosh computer were made more readily available, and all public affairs special­ists were trained to use and maintain them.

Most important, allowing only sea­soned enlisted people into the public affairs field would give evaluators something more to go on than an ob­jective test and a single interview per­formed by a public affairs officer. Can­didates would have a military track record that could be verified through previous commands.

The Coast Guard should create a public affairs flag billet. Placing the program in the hands of a junior flag officer would lend it internal credibility and would mean that the billet could ultimately be filled by officers with ex­tensive public affairs experience. Fur­ther down the chain, officers with pub­lic affairs aptitude might be less likely to shun repeat assignments as public af­fairs officers for fear of hampering their careers.

The Coast Guard should upgrade district public affairs officer billets from lieutenant to lieutenat commander. The public affairs officer is now unique among junior officers in terms of inter­action with the commander and staff. He or she is—or should be—an adviser to a senior officer, and lieutenant com­manders are better equipped to do that than ensigns.

The Coast Guard should institute part-time assistant public affairs officer billets that would serve the dual func­tion of both recruiting tomorrow’s pub­lic affairs officers and affording the same long look for picking prospective

enlisted public affairs specialists from the ranks of seasoned petty officers.

Choosing more senior enlisted per­sonnel and increasing officer strength would certainly mean added cost, but the payoff in improving Coast Guard public affairs is a long-term benefit for the entire Coast Guard.

A new public affairs program would not be easy to implement or administer; it would be harder, relying as it does on the screening process to admit only qualified candidates. For the Coast Guard to continue as it has with public affairs—led by non-public affairs pro­fessionals and conducted by too few people too haphazardly chosen, inade­quately trained, and poorly equipped-" is to doom the nation’s smallest armed service to anonymity.

Richard A. Booth is editor of the First Coast Guard District journal, First Word, in Boston, Massachusetts.

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By Lieutenant Commander Terry A. McKay, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)

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Although it does not project a particularly glamorous image of the U.S. Coast Guard, Commercial Vessel Safety is essential for the prevention of maritime disasters.

Where is the Coast Guard Going with the Commercial Vessel Safety Mission ?

The U.S. Coast Guard has managed Commercial Vessel Safety (CVS) for more than 50 years, but this program has never achieved equal status with other Coast Guard missions. According to This Is the Coast Guard, by Kaplan and Hunt, “of all the Coast Guard’s many missions, it is probable that none is more complex or less understood than Com­mercial Vessel Safety.” The mission is almost totally un­known in the civilian world, outside of the merchant ma­rine. Even within the Coast Guard, it is often viewed by outsiders with suspicion and the feeling that it is not part of the “real” Coast Guard.

Kaplan and Hunt note that “like many preventive programs, CVS is seldom dramatic enough to be newsworthy in a society that would rather read about maritime disasters than precautions against their occurrence.” The Coast Guard has a self­image that it believes and tries to pro­ject to the outside world: that of a seagoing service responding to mar­itime emergencies or threats. It is a glamorous image, whether responding to drug smuggling or boaters in dis­tress. CVS, however, stands alone as a preventive program that is not seago­ing—it does not fit the image.

In the first 30 years of CVS, the

program’s stepchild image was little more than a curiosity. Though it was usually considered one of the less-de­sirable career fields, the sheer numbers of personnel assigned to CVS provided sufficient room to maintain program expertise and allow for a reasonable chance of promotion. Field units known as Marine Inspection Offices

were dedicated to CVS activities, and there was a reasonable expectation that department heads, executive officers, and commanding officers were veter­ans of the CVS program.

Starting In the 1970s, a series of changes began to undermine the basic structure of the CVS program. As the U.S. deep-draft merchant fleet shrank rapidly after the end of the Vietnam

War, the number of CVS field billets began to drop, and the port-safety and environmental-protection missions began to assume greater importance under Captain of the Port Offices. Th^e Coast Guard began to merge Marine Inspection Offices and Captain of the Port Units to create Marine Safety Of' fices, which combined all missions into a single organization.

Conventional wisdom said that an officer was more likely to be promoted by maintaining qualification in two different fields, and some had chosen both Ma­rine Inspection Offices and Captain of the Port tours to establish the two paths. Th^)S dual qualification was seen by some as a compromise¹ professionalism in each are³ By 1993, the mergers were essentially complete, and conventional wisdom now says that MSO experience represents a single career path. Long-term career ad­vancement requires not onlJ CVS experience but also Environmental/Port Safety qualifications. What was once a compromise in pro' fessionalism for few has b^e' come the requirement for all. The ad­vent of Marine Safety Offices began producing large numbers of officers ^ who had been exposed to all aspects⁰ its workload by constantly going through training programs. Many ne'^er stayed in one area long enough to de­velop enough experience to contribute to mission performance. They were simply a training burden passing

•bough, often acquiring only a superfi- ^cbl appreciation of the mission area.

Program managers recognized the Problem with respect to junior officers ^a,)d published policy guidance in the Marine Safety Manual:

Exposure to more than one facet of marine safety provided by cross training is beneficial to producing a well-rounded officer. However, this must be balanced against the need to maintain a minimum level of exper­tise necessary to perform our duties.

This policy tries to limit the problem ^Jt the junior-officer level but does Nothing for the problems created by ^Cr0ss training at the department head b'el _or higher—where the stakes are Uglier.

CVS has suffered greatly under this tystem. The program manager acknowl­^edged in 1992 that the average inspec- ^l°r had only 26 months of experience, me Chief of the Inspection Department ^at some Marine Safety Offices is a first- *°Ur inspector. A second-tour inspector bed to be considered as just starting "^is productive years as a journeyman "•specter. Today, an inspector who has ^c°mpleted a two-year training tour is ^c°nsidered an authority in the field.

When an organization begins to fal­^ter. part of the problem can be traced to Management—and the Coast Guard is ^1,0 exception. For more than 20 years,

•b flag officer heading the CVS pro- ®^ram (combined with others in recent ypars) has usually come from the tech- ⁿbal staff of the CVS program. The °^ureau of Marine Inspection and Navi­gation (BMIN) had a technical staff ^hen it was merged into the Coast Vrd, but BMIN’s clear emphasis was Inspection and field office responsibil- "V and authority. While a portion of be CVS technical staff remains de­nted to field support, another part is ben increasingly as an independent au- bority where all wisdom resides and ''bose mission is to direct and control he cvs program. Leaders have forgot- *^cn that even though the technical staff |^erVes a vital function, it is a staff nation, nevertheless. _f Coast Guard leadership is looking ^avorably on the concept of third-party b°^rk with Coast Guard oversight, par- ^lcnlarly for vessel inspection. In this l*^Cenario, the Coast Guard would be

with the management of the pro­barn rather than its execution—retain- b? a feeling of importance while leav­es the work to others.

Oversight converts the CVS pro­gram to a staff function, and the pro­gram will be remade in the image of those who succeed in staff work. In a February 1993 Associated Press article, business manager and consultant Eu­gene Jennings discussed the problems associated with IBM's near disaster. “Personnel whose results went to the bottom line were esteemed ... no bet­ter than staff personnel who soaked up profits with little risk.” Jennings also found fault with equating personal mo­bility with development. “The measure of success became how fast one could move both laterally and vertically . . . managers learned more about the arts of mobility than of management.

Oversight ignores two critical issues. First, the overseer should have as much knowledge as (and preferably more than) the person performing the job.

How will the Coast Guard maintain the expertise if it stops doing the work it­self on a regular basis? At some point, oversight will become a paper exercise where all the forms and reports are completed but do not represent any meaningful work. The marine industry and the third-party inspectors will be­come adept at giving the Coast Guard exactly what it wants, albeit a paper exercise. Coast Guard field personnel are already doing this with our own Marine Safety Information System. We have learned to feed the computer with the data headquarters demands, though it often does not reflect what is actually

going on.                                          .

The second problem is the quality ot third-party work. In a February 1992 Associated Press article on the world­wide scandal surrounding the loss of bulk carriers, Paul Slater, chairman of First International Finance Corporation, a U.S. shipping finance company, wrote that “Not only are those societies unaccountable, but with each bulker lost, it could be argued that their per­sonnel are either corrupt or incompe­tent or simply out of touch. Those who favor oversight would argue that those problems are in the more obscure classification societies. However, the same article quotes the permanent sec­retary of the International Association of Classification Societies, which repre­sents the 11 major societies, as saying the record of the practices of the early 1980s was “pretty disastrous.”

No third party can ever take its own financial interest out of its dealings with an owner. Although a classifica­tion society may be a not-for-profit business, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel intense financial pressure to pay its own employees and preserve its own

existence. They compete with other third parties for fees paid directly by the owner who is free to go elsewhere.

It also means a third party sometimes looks for the Coast Guard inspector to make a hard decision and give an owner bad news rather than take heat himself. What happens when the Coast Guard is no longer there to be the bad guy? The Coast Guard is aware of the pressure that industry can apply at the local or headquarters level. What third party will be able to resist such pres­sure when resistance may have major financial implications?

Congress recognized a problem and dealt with it effectively when it created the Steamboat Inspection Service in 1838. It made maritime safety a federal function with the clear emphasis and responsibility on inspection, instead of creating a Steamboat Technical Service or Steamboat Oversight Service. Mate­rials, design, technology and construc­tion may have changed since then, but human nature and financial pressures have not. Only a government organiza­tion has the independence to make and enforce hard decisions on matters of public safety.

If the Coast Guard retains actual ex­ecution of CVS activities, it must deal with the issue of decreasing profession­alism. Our duties require extensive pro­fessional knowledge and experience; management and leadership skills are not enough. The requirement to cover too many missions is diluting skills and degrading performance. It is only the institutional arrogance of the Coast Guard and the conceit of individual of­ficers that result in constant claims of excellence.

The Coast Guard is awash in the rhetoric of Total Quality Management. We have our lexicon, training, tools, meetings, and a newsletter to let us know how well we are doing. Yet im­plementation of TQM at the field level can only work on the fringes of CVS performance, because the problems are too deep and systemic. No organiza­tion that acknowledges “a minimum level of expertise necessary to do our job” can ever be a true adherent of TQM. Only when TQM reorders prior­ities to put mission performance first—and then reshapes personnel policies to support CVS—will it have any profound effects.

Lieutenant Commander McKay recently retired with over 22 years of Navy and Coast Guard service and 15 years as an inspector. His last as­signment was with the Marine Safety Office, Chicago, Illinois.

And nobody asked me...

By Lieutenant Commander James C. Howe, U.S. Coast Guard

. • the Coast Guard should eliminate both Area commands, both Maintenance and Logistics Commands and several Districts.”

Give the People What They Want

Last year saw a dramatic rise in pub­lic activism and concern over how our government is managed. The public’s interest today remains intense, and what the people want is clear: stream­lined and cost-effective government; a minimum of bureaucracy; agencies that serve the public and not themselves; and responsible public servants dedi­cated to eliminating wasteful spending. Most important, the American people want their tax dollars spent on pro­grams that produce results.

The Coast Guard has long enjoyed public support and has proved to be a productive and valuable institution.

Still, in the current fiscal climate, a warning bell sounds that cannot be ignored—President Bill Clinton has announced his intention to re­duce federal administrative costs by 14% over the next four years. Coupled with popular demands for money-saving measures, this may evolve quickly into politically ex­pedient yet misguided legislative action, and micromanagement that could cripple the effectiveness—or en­danger the very existence—of the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard must stay in tune with popular opinion and take prompt measures to streamline itself for maxi­mum efficiency. By doing so, it can emerge as a model of government effi­ciency, improve its service to the pub­lic, and remain a valued federal agency.

Despite its honorable record of low- cost public service, the Coast Guard is handicapped by a pair of ingrained or­ganizational flaws. Its command struc­ture is topheavy, redundant, and out­dated, while it also suffers from a shortage of personnel at its operational units, many of which are hard-pressed to accomplish a growing list of mis­sions at minimal manning levels.

To improve Coast Guard efficiency, both of these problems must be cor­rected. Taking advantage of new com­munications and computer technologies, the command structure should be streamlined, making more resources and personnel available for direct pub­lic service.

Today, the Coast Guard has too many layers of command, too many managers, and too few operators. Three distinct command levels exist between Coast Guard Headquarters and most operational units: Areas (Atlantic and Pacific), Districts (a total of ten), and Groups (45). A second chain of com­mand for support functions, headed by two Maintenance and Logistics Com­mands (MLCs), coexists somewhat un­easily with the Areas and Districts. In total, 14 flag officers exercise control over field or support units, and in al­most every instance, operational units receive direction and guidance from at least two flag staffs—redundancy that often leads to friction and inefficiency.

To improve efficiency, the Coast

Guard should eliminate both Area com­mands, both MLCs, and several Dis­tricts, and give the remaining Districts responsibility for all operational and support functions within their geo­graphic boundaries. Each should report directly to Coast Guard Headquarters. The Coast Guard should also dissolve the present dual command structure in support and operations and reestablish a single chain of command for all field units.

Area commands—which act primar­ily as resource managers for larger cut­ters and aircraft, intelligence informa­tion, and telecommunications—are a relic of the Cold-War era, when their need to coordinate with the U.S. Navy for coastal defense made them essen­tial. With the communist threat gone, however, the functions of both Area staffs could be handled more efficiently from a single point at Headquarters, eliminating overlapping efforts.

MLC support functions—engineer­ing, health services, and legal affairs— would revert back to District Comman­ders with oversight from the appropriate Headquarters staff. Until 1987, when the MLCs were created in a service­

wide realignment of support functions, District Commanders had this control. Coordination between District, MLC, and Area staffs for support issues now generates much unnecessary work. It makes more sense for District Comman­ders to regain direct management of the support given to their field units.

Today, the Seventh District in Miami manages roughly one fourth of all Coast Guard cutters and aircraft and about 5,000 military personnel—1,500 more than the next largest District. De­spite being in the forefront of many of the service’s high-intensity missions (narcotics interdiction and Haitian and Cuban migrant operations), District Seven runs smoothly, even in the face of repeated crises. The efficien­cies learned in running this mas­sive District would be employed in all of the newly enlarged Districts whose workloads would approximate that of today’s Seventh.

The 1987 realignment, which eliminated two District offices, gives a good historical perspec­tive of how consolidation can work to the Coast Guard’s advantage. The lessons of the 1987 realignment are clear: despite some predictions that the expanded Districts would be unable to manage their increased workloads, they achieved better efficiency, closer unit standardization, and more flexibility in their operations. Many District staff bil­lets were saved through consolidation, providing more Coast Guard personnel for service in the field.

It should not be difficult, therefore, to redistribute present workloads and eliminate three or more Districts. On the East Coast, for example Districts in Boston, Miami, New Orleans, and Cleveland could remain, with their bor­derlines redrawn to distribute person­nel, resources, and workloads better. In the Pacific, Districts in Long Beach and Seattle could be combined, or the Fourteenth District (Honolulu) could be converted to a Section, falling under the command of District Eleven in Long Beach (along with the Far East and Marianas Sections).

The dissolution of the Areas, MLCs, and several Districts would require that the staff at Coast Guard Headquarters

^u°2en. They should be sized for a] ^nximately equal responsibilities.

8Mw and become more involved in the tay-to-day oversight of operational and ^SuPport functions. The direct contact tatween Headquarters and the Districts "'Quid result in a much-needed ^change—giving policy makers closer ^c°ntact with the operational Coast Guard. Headquarters has long been tampered by being out of touch with ’ta field, inadvertently shielded by the kyers of staff at the Areas and MLCs. Gpen communication among all levels

Management is a necessity in any or­ganization, and the elimination of a ^c°mplete level of bureaucracy—as well ^as the unwieldy dual chain of com­mand—would enhance communication greatly.

Redistribution of tasks also should °ucur at the lower end of the chain of ^e°mmand, by standardizing workloads among Groups. Today’s Groups come ^1,1 a wide range of sizes—from those ’hat oversee a handful of units to krger commands that manage several

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^L°ast Guard could realistically cut tack from 45 to about 30 Groups, free- ^lng a large number of administrative ^and managerial billets.

Operational units should be the focus of two major initiatives. First, every field unit should receive enough personnel to be fully operational for all assigned missions. The minimal-man­ning concept should be replaced by a full-manning ethic that keeps field units as self-sufficient as possible. The units should never be crippled by per­sonnel problems or during peak peri­ods of operations.

A second initiative to increase field unit efficiency is to continue exploring alternate methods for manning and maintaining Coast Guard cutters, air­craft, and shore stations. One such pro­ject being evaluated at Coast Guard Station Taylor’s Island, Maryland, is the “Norwegian SAR Station” concept, in which a Coast Guard response boat moors at a commercial pier instead of a government-owned facility, thereby re­lieving the unit of the enormous work­load inherent in maintaining buildings and the station’s grounds. At Taylor’s Island, the station’s crew has been re­duced to less than half of its original size, while its service to the public re­mains unchanged.

The streamlining of the Coast Guard command structure would free hundreds of billets for the field. Lower-ranking personnel could be transferred directly to needy cutters and shore commands. The congressionally mandated ratio of officer billets also would require change. Many requirements for admi­rals, captains, and other high-ranking of­ficers eliminated through consolidation could be converted to lower ranks. The actual number of Coast Guard men and women would increase without added cost, as senior officer assignments are exchanged for a larger number of less- expensive petty officer billets.

The Coast Guard today has a unique opportunity to give the American peo­ple what they want by reinventing its own command structure and freeing personnel and resources for direct ser­vice to the public. The nation’s small­est military service could then stand tall as a model of a progressive, cost-con­scious public agency, dedicated to giv­ing the taxpayers enormous benefits at an affordable cost.

Lieutenant Commander Howe is the Public Affairs Officer for the Seventh Coast Guard Dis­trict in Miami, Florida. He most recently served as Commanding Officer, USCGC Metompkin (WPB-1325).

And nobody asked me either ...

By BM3 Kurt R. Nelson, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve