Notice, March 1996

DOE Labs Issue Comes Front and Center As Contract Decision Enters Critical Phase

The issue of the University of California's management of three Department of Energy laboratories took on a higher profile in February with the release of a major Academic Senate committee report on the subject and a critical memorandum on the report prepared by several Senate leaders.

The Senate report and the response to it seem likely to initiate a far-reaching consideration of a question the UC faculty has visited before: should the University continue to manage the three DOE-owned labs, at Berkeley, Livermore, and Los Alamos? The question was stated in explicit terms in the Senate committee report, which recommended that UC's Senate divisions conduct mail-ballot votes on whether to "phase out responsibility" for managing the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, the two UC-managed labs that conduct nuclear weapons research. Critics of the report charged, however, that, should the faculty adopt such a "single-dimensioned position," it was likely to be rejected out of hand by the UC Regents and would have the effect of undercutting any faculty ability to modify new labs contracts.

The timing of the February events was appropriate, as the University and DOE have entered a critical period in the cycle they go through every five years of deciding whether to remain partners in the operation of the DOE-owned labs. Indeed, University officials think it is likely that DOE officials will this month be making what may be the single most important decision of all this process: whether to offer the University an extension of the labs management contracts. The alternative is to solicit bids from several potential contractors. In the past, UC's position has been that it would not be among the bidders in such a situation.

The current labs management contracts expire in the fall of 1997. If DOE decides to extend UC's management of the labs, the University would need to agree to enter into negotiations for new five-year contracts no later than the fall of 1996. Within the University, the decision on whether to continue to manage the labs rests with the Regents. Given the timing involved, the next few months stand to be a critical period for the faculty to transmit its views on the labs to the Regents. On February 16, Academic Council Vice-Chair Duncan Mellichamp wrote to President Atkinson advising him that, if a DOE "extend/compete" decision were made in March, the Senate would need at least until May to forward to the administration faculty views on labs management.

The new Senate report on the labs was produced by the statewide Senate's University Committee on Research Policy (UCORP), chaired by Warren Gold, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. The result of some 18 months of work, the report was drawn up in response to a 1994 request from Academic Council Chair Daniel Simmons. (The full report and related materials are available on-line at the address: http://www.chemistry.ucsc.edu/anderso/UC_CORP.) Gold and UCORP Vice-Chair Bruce Rickborn of UC Santa Barbara formally presented the report to the Academic Council in February. Following remarks by them, each member of the Council was given an opportunity to ask questions about the report and to respond to it.

The report itself is highly critical of almost every aspect of UC's relationship with the Los Alamos and Livermore labs. (The committee completely set aside the question of UC's management of the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory, owing to its integration with UC Berkeley and the fundamentally different character of the work its scientists carry out.)

Deciding that UC management should be judged in terms of "appropriate public service," rather than in terms of labs science or lab-campus interactions, UCORP found UC's performance deficient in many respects. The report says, for example, that UC still may not be protecting freedom of speech rights for lab employees; that it is "apparently not interested in investigating" allegations that Los Alamos personnel policies are "seriously out of line with University policy"; and that it hires, as its chief labs administrators "individuals who come from the Laboratories and who return to them," thus setting up an inherent conflict of interest.

Indeed, the report alleges, "UC has never assumed authority for management of the Laboratories in the usual sense of the term," as it leaves such seemingly routine management functions as purchasing and cost-control to the labs and DOE, while reserving few functions to itself. Meanwhile, with respect to research collaborations between the campuses and labs, the report says, "There is no identifiable reason why all existing collaborations . . . should not continue whether the Laboratories are managed by UC or another entity."

UCORP's analysis prompted it to recommend that Senate votes be held on the proposition that: "The University of California will, in a timely and orderly manner, phase out responsibility for management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."

This wording may sound familiar to long-time UC faculty as it is nearly identical to the proposition Senate divisions voted on in the spring of 1990 -- the last time the labs contracts decision came before UC. That proposition likewise stemmed from the work of a Senate panel, the "Jendresen" committee. In time, faculty on all nine UC campuses voted to endorse the Jendresen committee's recommendation, though the Regents subsequently voted to renew the labs contracts.

The UCORP report is just now being widely distributed to faculty on UC's campuses, but it has received a chilly reception from one quarter. Four faculty who serve as UC faculty representatives to the University's President's Council on the National Laboratories signed a letter to members of the Academic Council charging that, extensive as it is, the UCORP report actually is so limited in scope that "the Academic Council will be hard pressed to develop its own independent view" of the UC-labs relationship unless it looks beyond the report for information. Two of the signatories to the letter are Arnold Leiman and Duncan Mellichamp, who are ex-officio members of the President's Labs Council because of their positions as chair and vice-chair of the Academic Council. The other signatories are former Council Chair Daniel Simmons and Malcolm Nicol, a former chair of the University Committee on Planning and Budget.

The letter charged that UCORP had conflated ethical and objective issues in its report and that the committee's call for an up-or-down vote on labs management was likely to have the effect of reducing any meaningful role for the Senate in modifying new labs contracts.

"The basic issue we're raising is not of being in favor or against management of the labs," said Council Chair Leiman. "It's important that the process employed by the Senate in reviewing the labs have a multi-dimensional perspective."

Responding to this criticism, Gold said that "I think that virtually everything that they accuse us of not doing is in fact done, with the exception that we didn't spend pages of the report documenting that the labs are productive, valuable institutions. The issue of scientific merit wasn't at issue; it was a given." With respect to the idea that Senate votes on severing labs ties would be counterproductive, Gold said that "The Senate voted overwhelmingly last time to phase out the contract. . . After this, there was a major improvement made in the contract. I would conclude that this improvement came not in spite of the faculty response, but because of it."