With a critical Department of Energy decision in hand, the University of California seemed poised at the end of May to enter into contract negotiations that will likely lead to UC's continued management of DOE laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore, and Los Alamos, New Mexico.
On May 15, DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary announced that her department would seek to extend the contracts under which UC manages the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The alternative for DOE was to seek competitive bids for management of the labs, a decision that might have ended UC's relationship with the facilities. With the extension decision, UC officials said they would likely be coming to the UC Regents in June with a proposal to enter into contract negotiations with DOE. If, as expected, the Regents approve the administration proposal, negotiations would take place over the course of the next year and would culminate in the approval of new agreements by October 1, 1997.
Given the timing of events, the critical forum for Senate input into the Regents' contract decision will be the very June meeting at which the board is expected to act. Arnold Leiman, chair of the Senate's Academic Council, has said he will be presenting a range of Senate views to the Board, including the position of the Academic Council itself, as expressed in the report of the Council 'Coleman' subcommittee, and the views set forth in the report by the University Committee on Research Policy (UCORP), which in February presented the Council with an analysis of the UC-labs relationship. In addition, four campuses -- Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Irvine and Riverside -- have conducted mail-ballot votes on the proposition that UC should phase out its management of the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs. Balloting on this issue has been completed at Santa Barbara (which voted for the proposition) and at Berkeley (which voted against it). Leiman said he will transmit the results of these campuses deliberations to the board.
All observers agree that nothing the Senate says is likely to alter the outcome of the Regents vote; a decision to enter into contract negotiations seems all but certain. Anticipating this outcome, the Academic Council took the position that UC should seek a number of changes in the contracts that will be negotiated. Leiman said he intends to inform the Regents of the Council's major recommendations in this regard.
DOE's decision to extend UC's management of the labs was notable in several respects. First, while Secretary O'Leary noted UC's "longstanding experience and world class scientific research capability," one of the reasons for her decision, she said, was that, given current events, it would be difficult to change labs management now. She noted that "paramount interests of our national security require a stable scientific platform at this critical juncture in the development and implementation of a Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program," which is aimed at maintaining a nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing.
Second, O'Leary said that it would be difficult to change management of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) in light of the fact that the land on which it sits is owned by the University. "Any decision to consider alternative management and operating sources could require relocation and duplication of our current research facilities at tremendous cost," she said. "This is not feasible and is certainly incompatible with the need for the uninterrupted conduct of our current research mission." The statement was seemingly a first in separating out the management of LBL -- which does no defense work -- from the management of Livermore and Los Alamos, which do weapons research.
Finally, O'Leary made clear that if the University is to continue managing the Los Alamos Laboratory (LANL), it will have to work on the community relations of the lab. UC, O'Leary said, will be expected to bring about improvements in LANL's relationship with "its neighbors in Northern New Mexico." At issue is the economic development of Northern New Mexico -- as impacted by labs hiring and contracting -- and concerns over environmental health and safety. These concerns are serious enough, O'Leary said, that a regnegotiated LANL contract "must also contain a provision which will provide for special assessments in the first and second year of contract performance to monitor the University's progress . . ."
As to what effect UC faculty deliberations might have had on DOE's
decision to extend the contracts, Deputy Secretary of Energy Charles
Curtis told the Chronicle of Higher Education that "faculty
opposition to the university's continued involvement with the
laboratories . . . played a role in the department's decision
not to sponsor a competition." To undertake such competition,
he said, "would have presented the university's regents with
a potentially divisive decision about whether to compete."