Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing On Military Privatized Housing 20240713

Conditions for military personnel in privetized housing. From Tinker Air Force base and igtd this was something that was unique to Tinker Air Force base and its also all the way around the country. And so that was the background of how this all started. Weve come to learn that its it is a problem nationwide. Its a National Crisis of proportions we havent seen since the scandal at walter reed about a decade ago. Members of this committee, our staff and myself, weve all traveled and seen these problems firsthand. This is the third hearing this committee has had on this issue and im sure its not going to be the last. We open that since our first two hearings in february and march that we would see more differences by now and be able to use this hearing, in fact, it was set up to discuss the progress thats been made. Well, it is set up to look at the progress, but the progress has not been what we wanted. We continue to hear regularly from the families across the country about questionable practices, poor workmanship and about housing contractors not caring about the families theyre supposed to be serving. Additionally as reported in the press, some of these contractors are now under investigation for defrauding the federal government. Im worried what else can come out of the woodwork on this. What other problems are out there that we dont know . To our witnesses from the department, i have to ask, when is enough enough. I have to make one comment, though of the eight witnesses that are here, with one exception, they all kind of walked into this blind because its a new issue that youre not familiar with. When im critical, say some things that are critical, im not looking at you personally but as the department and how youve who is representing it before you arrived here. So regardless of any potential criminal wrongdoing, were still receiving complaints showing that youre still failing to fix the problem. The time for talk is over. If these companies cant get the job done, you owe it to the military families to find a company who will. This housing problem is really a readiness problem. We dont think of it as being a readiness problem. I had experience talking about this. We actually had two airmen who had to come back from uae to handle this problem that should have been handled by the military in their absence. This is a very important element. These hearings are not to be an indictment of the privatization housing system as a whole because in some cases its worked very well. To those who lead our men and women in uniform, i ask what are we going to do about it since almost a year later were still hearing from the same about the same problems. As i mentioned earlier, this will not be the last hearing im putting our witnesses on notice that we will have another hearing early next year to discuss implementation of our housing Reform Efforts and contractors will be back to answer the hard questions. I had some things i was going to say about ms. Field, but i think i will go ahead and not use her time. But i think that the gao has done a great job. And i want to make sure everyone hears from them. But to remediate these and dozens of other problems, we have more than 30 housingrelated provisions in the nda this year. 30 provisions. Thats another reason that the ndaa is important and weve been unable we have those problems that we will be addressing. We cant afford to ignore this readiness problem. Were continuing to pass the ndaa every year. It supports a Bipartisan National Security of our country and should not be held hostage by issues outside this commits jurisdiction. Unfortunately because of issues that are not in the Senate Armed Services committee jurisdiction, this years ndaa is not yet resolved which means only leadership can clear up this logjam thats out there. Its greater now than it was. Were out of time and i didnt mean to deviate from the subjects of this Committee Hearing but i think its very important that we bring this up, this critical thing thats taking place right now. I hope we can move past these issues so we can remain focused on the promises we made to those who serve our country and get the ndaa signed into law. That should be our priority and it is. With that, i would like to recognize the military families who have traveled here today to seek answers from you and we would like to have theyre in the back of the room. I want all families that have an interest or have been affected to stand up right now. Lets give them a round of applause. [ applause ] as i have said before, these are the people who trust you whose trust youre going to have to regain. Senator reed. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I would like to begin by again thanks the vast number of military families who have spoken out about the inadequate conditions of their privatize d helping. I want to recognize the families who have traveled here today for this hearing. Today we welcome ms. Elizabeth field. Ms. Field, i want to thank you and your team for your dedicated work thus far. The gaos findings confirm the Alarming Trends we have heard. The gao found the 87 satisfaction rate is misleading and unreliable and that the records for work orders and Service Calls are questionable. This committee continues to receive complaints directly from military families. While the services have made strides since last february, many unacceptable problems with housing remain. I am still not convinced these private companies are doing everything in their power and investing as much as they can to improve the homes for the military. I have several questions that i ask be entered into the record that were requested directly by military families and diagnosing medical problems caused by inadequate housing conditions. While the conference process is still under way for the fiscal year 2020, i remain confident that we will reach an agreement on legislation that will representative a reform of housing since its inception in 199 6. We have a lot of work to do and i thank the chairman for convening this important and timely hearing. Lastly, i want to take this opportunity with the civilian and military leadership of each of the services present to express my deep concern about the president s recent interference in war crimes cases involving members of the u. S. Military. These comments will follow the senate on november 21st. The president has the pardon, but he has the responsibility to use that power wisely and not recklessly. Good order and discipline are time ready. Ensuring military and women remain tethered to our ethical principles. President trumps disregard for our military Justice System risked undermines the confidence of our Service Members and the rule of law and their chain of command. Especially those who are courageous enough to bring allegations of war crimes to light and testify against their teammates. When we do not hold our military personnel to appropriate standards of conduct, it also makes it more likely that they will face similar abuses on the battlefield and less likely that we will be able to hold our enemies accountable. Theres no one with more credibility on these issues than former senator john mccain who stated this is a moral debate. It is about who we are. I dont mourn the loss of any terrorist life. What i do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we encourage those who fight this war for us to beget that best sense of ourselves through the violence, chaos, and heart ache of war, we are always americans, indifferent, stronger, and better than those who destroy us. I believe the president s interference in these cases have done them a serious disservice. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator reed. Each of the departments has submitted a statement for the record and i would ask each of our departments to look through the to limit your remarks to five minutes. We have a full panel today. We have a lot of members who have a lot of questions. Before we turn to the department, i would ask ms. Elizabeth field to provide her statement which i know includes new findings that will be made public for the first time today. Ms. Field . Thank you, chairman inhoff, senators and staff of the committee. Its an honor to be here today to discuss the ongoing work assessing the military housing initiative. Almost as soon as reports began surfacing last year of problems with military Privatized Housing, Service Members and their families began reaching out to us to share their stories. We heard from military families who were reported mold throughout their homes, rodent infestations and other Serious Problems like gas and Carbon Monoxide leaks and repeated sewage leaks. While these are just some of the examples of the come complaints, theyre indicative of the types of concerns we heard from military families living at Privatized Housing across the country. What we wanted to find out when we began receiving these come complaints was how commonly held they were. Defense Department Officials have primarily pointed to two metrics to help answer that question. First, they cite the results of the annual sfatisfaction survey. Tenant satisfaction has remained at 87 and is a critical indicator of program success. However, as senator reed noted, we have determined that for many reasons ranging from how the survey question was asked to how the results were compiled and calculated, this 87 figure is not in any way reliable. Second, the department points to high occupancy rates. Dod stated that the fact that occupancy rates remain greater than 93 programwide demonstrates a high level of Service Member satisfaction and overall success in providing suitable and desirable housing. However, through our site invites where we conducted 15 focus groups with families, we learned that Family Members choose to live in Privatized Housing for reasons that have nothing to do with the housing itself. Reasons such as living in close proximity to medical and Education Services for children with special needs or a concern that offbase housing is neither affordable or safe. We sought a different way to determine the extent of the problems we were hearing about. We collected and analyzed over 8 million work order records from all 14 private partners and all 79 projects. Our hope was that we could use this data to determine the hazards to see patterns over time and to assess the timeliness of maintenance conducted on the homes. Unfortunately, we found that because the data in these records are not captured reliably or consistently, they cannot be used to do so. Among other problems, we found anomalies in the data provided by all 14 private partners such as duplicate work order and work orders with completion dates prior to when they were submitted. The problems i detailed are significant not just because they tell us that dods statement that the program has been successful overall may not be fully accurate, but because the department has been using these metrics to reward and incentivize the private partners. The Service Secretaries along with officials from the office of secretary of defense have taken steps to address these and other problems, from working to renegotiate the Fee Structure to strengthening oversight on the ground to increasing Staffing Levels to military offices and i also want to acknowledge the many factories that make this a deeply complex problem. Including the departments inability to unilaterally make certain changes to the legal agreements with the partners. Through our ongoing review, we know that the departments efforts are headed in the right direction. But it will take sustained attention likely over a number of years to work through the many complications of this longterm Public Private partnership and to meet the departments goal of providing safe and clean housing for all Service Members and their families. Thank you and i look forward to your questions. Thank you, ms. Field. We have a lot of participation today. Were going to have sevenminute rounds. We were going to ask our members to stay on subject. There will be temptation to get into other areas, but housing is it today. That will be what we will attempt to do and i will take my first im sorry. Lets go ahead with our Opening Statements. Lets start with secretary mccarthy. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Chairman inhoff, Ranking Member reed, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to provide an update since the focus on Housing Operations began in february of 2019. I would like to reiterate the armys serious commitment to providing safe, quality and Affordable Housing to our soldiers, Civil Servants and their families. Its our responsibility to provide housing, not simply to code, but to quality. We must fix the current housing crisis using a housetohouse approach. Over the last ten months, we identified our governance flaws, initiated town halls and created 24hour help lines to hear feedback from the families. We have empowered the chain of command. Created transparency of the work order process and ultimately sought to regain the trust of the men and women in our ranks and their families. We directed housing as our top priority and are aligning resources against it. We assigned Housing Operations to the fourstar commander who has the authority to with hold Incentive Fees. We have developed new metrics, measuring work order Response Times. Work order repair quality and satisfaction that will allow us to hold fees for substandard performance. As a service, a bill of rights is being finalized. We are also equally concerned and admitted to improving barracks and armyowned housing. For fy 20, projects will total 790 million. While the army has worked hard over the past 10 months to make significant strides, theres much more work to be done. The immediate focus is to fix current housing issues that can be addressed through work orders and improved management. We owe it to the 45 of our force who live on post. In addition, we need to to address the needs of families who have been displaced across Army Installations theres a need for Standard Operating Procedures and accountability of claims. This must include standardizing rent reimbursement and remediation or replacement of household items. Since february, the army has tracked the displacement of 2,2 currently, 182 families are still in temporary housing, while Privatized Companies are addressing issues in their homes. To displaced families, days can feel like weeks. And weeks can feel like months. These arent simply numbers, these are lies. Currently, we have over 86,000 privatized homes with one third of houses in good condition, one third in fair condition requiring minor refurbishing. And one third in Poor Condition needing to be rebuilt. Right now, the general is working on an overall analysis of the armys privatized requirements. We plan to present the findings in spring. In closing, the armys resolvediresolved to the commitment of providing safe housing to soldier and their families. We need congressional help in two areas. First, we need the nda approved to enact the residents bill of rights. Second, we need a final fy 2020 appropriations bill. My staff has reminded me that well stay on our schedule. Next well be hearing from the acting secretary and then secretary bearrett. Distinguished members of the committee, thank you for your continued attention to this very critical issue. For the Navy Marine Corp team our people are our most precious resource. Well always prioritize their safety and their well being, particularly of our sailors and marines, but also their families who serve alongside them. Theres an empty chair at thanksgiving table for many of our navy and marine corp families because a father, a mother, a wife or a husband was deployed overseas. These families serve with pride and distinction. On top of the considerable demands of military service, no military family should ever have to contend with chronic maintenance issues or concerns such as mold and pests in their homes. Trust and confidence are the bedrock of effective command in the sailors and marines in our care must be confident the leadership will advocate tirelessly on their behalf. This is commanders business. The three of us are actively engaged on this issue and have been since the beginning. Were committed to empowering leaders throughout the chain of command to assess, monitor and remediate issues of concern. Since the department of the navy last addressed this committee, we have diligently pursued three distinct lines of effort. One active and engaged leadership, two reinforcing the department of the navys oversight of our partners, and three, improving partnerships of Privatized Housing owners to most importantly restore trust with those families that reside in those Housing Units. Our written testimony provides more details on these efforts. So well close with this. While we have made steady progress, were not completely satisfied and well not rest in our determination to make this right for our sailors and marines and families. We appreciate the committees dunn continued resolve and the commitment of insuring final passage and the 2020 appropriations. Thank you and we look forward to your question. Thank you. Secretary barrett. Chairman inhofe, members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to discuss housing. The Service Chiefs Work Together on this issue. We share ideas of how to improve housing because our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who live on military facilities deserve safe, secure quarters. We are jointly committed to resolving housing issue and we thank you for your continued attention to this matter of mutual concern. Issues with Privatized Housing on some installations revealed instances of faulty construction, subpar maintenance and late to need responsiveness. While many bases have effective Privatized Housing, others have suffered with project owners who have simply failed. Some project owners have reportedly disregarded maintenance requests, misrepresented timelines, performed partial repairs and failed to address the root causes of problems. The air force owns part of the responsibility as well. We cut too many personnel who provided oversight of the projects and failed to fully empower the chain of command to own and fix these issues. As a result, housing problems have distracted from the air force mission. They have disrupted our airmen and dislocated their families. This is unacceptable. So were taking steps necessary to hold our project owners accountable for improved performance. During my confirmation hearing before this committee we discussed some of these issues. Subsequently, my first stop on my first trip as secretary was to survey base housing. In my first five weeks as secretary, i have examined Privatized Housing in wyoming, oklahoma, texas, and mississippi to observe problems and process firsthand. Since my predecessor testified on this subject nine months ago, the department of the air force has fixed many housing issues and made progress toward fixing others. They completed an important Inspector General investigation, the results of which have been shared with this committee. Dozens of recommendations from the ig and from air force itself and from families themselves have been fully and partially implemented. Process improvements fall into five broad categories. We are empowering the residents. We are integrating leadership and accountability into all levels of housing. Residents, project owners and the military chain of command are now communicating directly and candidly. Housing now has local and central scrutiny and oversight. Finally, air force policies for Housing Management had been updated and standardized. Under the leadership of air force assistant secretary John Henderson and tenacious base commanders, we are establishing Resident Councils to solicit direct feedback. Were placing new resident advocates at each of our military housing offices to connect residents with resources and to help resolve disputes and additional personnel will help us achieve 100 premove in inspections while enhancing oversight. We have also worked with project owners to fix root causes of recurring mold at the bases with the most severe challenges. Some housing issues invite concern about possible allegations that some owners manipulated data to increase their incentive awards. These allegations have been referred to the air force office of special investigations, which in coordination with the fbi will determine whether to press criminal charges. Senator, last week when you and i visited the air force base in mississippi, we met air force families who had been displaced from their privatized homes as many as four times in recent years. As these families prepared for thanksgiving they wondered whether they should decorate trees in their homes. Family disruptions are personal and impactful to these families and therefore to us. We owe it to our air force families to get this right. With your continued support we will. I look forward to your questions. Thank you, secretary barrett. Were going to have five minute rounds. We have more than a dozen contractors out there providing military housing to our services. Some are better than others. Theres one thats kind of notorious at one end of the spectrum and thats the im very familiar with that because thats where this whole thing started. In my Opening Statement i mentioned Tinker Air Force base. And it might be unfair since youre the newest one, secretary barrett, but to give you the first question. You know, when does if you had a repeater like this, why is it that theyre still there . What do we have to do . How do you pull a plug . How do you get that done . Are there contract obstacles out there . We want to get things done. And youre the newest one out there, what do you think . Senator, thats what were looking at. Before i was confirmed, the air force was taking action on exactly that concern. They received that Company Received a letter of current from the air force expressing that the air force has lost confidence in their ability to perform under their contract. That letter was issued in september. Since that time, they have not been receiving performance Incentive Fees. Since that time, all of their contract they have the contract on many bases, all of their performance fees have been withheld. Theyre under financial penalty right now, in addition to that they have been its been requested they submit an action plan for what they will be doing. That plan is due by the end of the year and there will be metrics and accountability from that plan or the air force will be initiating the elements accessible to us under the dispute resolution procedures, which could lead to anything up to a default on their lease. I guess short version is youre doing everything that you can do, you inherited the facilities that you are able to changes youre able to make currently . To each of the secretaries, id like to mention or i keep hearing that theyre talking about these Companies Said that they would be open to reopening these agreements to insure transparency, accountability and performance. Never talk about what the costs would be. I would ask any secretary who would like to respond to the question that behind closed doors are companies willing to reopen the agreements or are they giving lip service to contractors trying to dig their way out of a bad situation. If theyre open to reopening them, the agreements, have they any of them talked about what the cost would be involved to do such a thing . Any of the secretaries. Mr. Chairman, in our most recent discussions with the irc partners, there was a discussion about the restructuring of the debt of their companies. The economics in most cases for the projects are under 1996 Interest Rates. So 7 , 8 , 9 for their projects, which by changing the scoring model at o b, we can provide an opportunity for them to go to Capital Markets and increase the capital for reinvestment. What we need to do weve instructed for the army to come back with an analysis of how substantial of a project this would entail and then would have to negotiate that. The sense that i had from the most recent discussion in september was there was definitely energy to do that. Any other secretaries . We absolutely would consider reopening the contracts, renegotiating the contracts. Its much more efficient to work under that contract now if they will correct their behaviors. If not and much cheaper than trying to start all over again . Exactly. Okay. You know, we do have some gotten some positive results. I know we hear more about the negative results. But i know in our case of tinker, the colonel took command of the 72nd air wing and things really started to improve. One of the things he did i was down there, i heard from other people saying he actually went to town Hall Meetings were talking about the those that are in charge in the chain of command doing town Hall Meetings and meet with people and getting emotionally involved with them. Id like to at least point out some good things are happening. We want to learn from those experiences. Senator reed. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Let me once again commend ms. Field for the excellent work. You made the point that many of the statistics that are used, particularly for the performance and Fee Structure are erroneous, misleading, not appropriate which begs the question, and ill address it firstly with the navy. Have you withheld performance fees just in general because of the inaccurate data, or specifically because of the problems youve encountered . Most recently, what we did, senator, was had to go back and look at the incentive award fees to insure that the metrics were such we had incentivized the appropriate behavior by the contractor in this case. What the general has done, hes revised them. We did get inputs from the gao and others. He has revised those. Those will go live here in a couple weeks. There are specific instances for installations in ft. Benning and i think in one of the most recently where we held back i think joint base lewis mccord withheld substantial fees back from the contractors in this case because of poor performance and work order Response Time as well as quality. Chief, do you want to add anything . Senator, i would add as the secretary said, the average Incentive Fee right now is 77 but were taking a harder look at that. Weve got some posts thats is 100 , but as low as 11 . Were seeing that making a difference in performance of the contracts. Mr. Secretary . We in the navy has not paid out an Incentive Fee this year. Were looking at those very very carefully to understand whether or not theyve earned them. And were going through that analysis. Going forward weve done what the army has done, in terms of changing the way were calculating the Incentive Fee to much more heavily rated towards Resident Feedback and their perceptions to including healthy and safety issues which were not part of the structure before. Thank you. Secretary, do you have anything to add . The air force has been looking at restructuring the fees, including a lot more of input from the base commanders so that the performance on the base is calculated into the structure. Im going to return again directing questions to each of the services. These contractual agreements you find now somewhat constraining in terms of getting the proper performance. Whats the biggest contractual obstacle that you see, secretary, mccarthy . Is there any way we can provide assistance to you to get that modified . Senator, when the bill of rights is published, i think that the dispute resolution is one in particular that we need to put in place as quickly as possible. Its why many cases that the only mechanism families have to get results is legal action. So its the sooner we can have a dispute resolution in place, it will help improve matters dramatically. If there was alliance between the companies and services on resolution, the benefit, quality of life, that would be a positive step . Yes, sir. Thank you. Mr. Secretary . Yes, senator, i agree with secretary mccarthy. I would say one of the other challenges we have is we dont have until now, we did not great visibility into the data. Most of the Maintenance Data was captured in two different types of i. T. Systems. Without getting into the mundane aspects of that, but they werent capturing data in the same ways. What were trying to do is to standardize that so we can get visibility into that a lot quicker so we understand if a contractor is not performing properly, we can take action on that a lot more immediately. I also agree with secretary mccarthy on the issue that the tenet bill of rights i think once we standardize that i think its going to really help our ability to resolve disputes more quickly. You can rationalize the data without any contractual changes, you can do that . Yes, sir, we believe we can do that. We need the partners to enter the data in a way that makes sense to us so we can compare it across the entire population of homes we manage. And your comments . I dont know of any contractual changes that congress can help us implement, but well take a look if thats the case, we would be happy to provide those for the record. Thank you very much, thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator reed. Ms. Field, who performed this Satisfaction Survey . The annual Satisfaction Survey is performed by a third party group. The questions that were asked and how the results were collected and analyzed and presented to you. Okay, who makes that determination . Well, there are multiple levels in which the problems with this so cel did not devise the questions, they just simply asked what they were told to ask . My understanding is that the services coordinated with cel to develop the questions. Specifically they asked how much do you agree or disagree, i would recommend this community to others, which is different than the question that was presented to you. I think we should all agree we got bad information, inaccurate information and we ought to completely rethink how we ask that question so we can find out what the troops are really thinking there. So thank you for that. Secretary barrett, thank you for coming to mississippi and visiting with our Service Members there, senator hyde smith was there with me. Congressman pulazzos staff was very involved also. And let me give a shoutout to colonel heather black, the commander there, as well as her senior enlisted leadership. I think this particular group of leaders represents, frankly, a mindset change to be very customer oriented and to be empathetic with the troops and the folks that are trying to make it work in these houses. Frankly, i would contrast that with some of the previous leadership we had, where one particular person told a member of my staff that by raising these questions, were simply making matters worse. I was absolutely delighted to see that theres none of that left at the leadership anymore and theres very much a mindset of knowing what the problem is and that it must be solved for folk whose have stepped forward. You have dedicated, assistant secretary, to work almost exclusively with this problem, is that right, secretary barrett . Senator, the assistant secretary has a lot of other duties as well, but hes spending a great deal of his time on exactly this topic and really is devoted to it. Thats John Henderson, and hes sitting behind you. So i want to thank him, too. And it does occur to me hes spending a lot of time on this. We have an unusual situation in that katrina hit and almost all of our 1,188 Housing Units had to be replaced in one fell swoop. And it took me a while, but yesterday i finally found out this information of the 1,188 residences there, 1,084 have experienced moisture and mold. Now were told this was a mistake with the installation of the air conditions units and particularly the air conditioning ducts. Id like for you to tell us on the record how many air Conditioning Companies were involved in this . Were all of them involved in these homes that have had the moisture problems . Why the multiple instances . You mentioned a family that had four that had had to leave their residences four times and the problem still hasnt been solved. Why is it the remediation is often not getting done . Why are they typically told youre going to be out of the house two weeks and typically that turned into four and six and eight weeks . Are there any houses that are ever repaired in two weeks . Id like to know that. How often does it in fact, take two weeks . And why is it that neighbors tell these people that their units that have been vacated often go days without workmen being there. Of course theyre out for longer and no work is being done. That cant be a good use of the time. Many of our troops are asked to move out to hotels because theres not adequate housing for them to be in. One troop said he had to be out by 11 00 a. M. , got all his belongings in his vehicle to be to comply with the 11 00 a. M. Checkout and then mid afternoon, as he sat in his car, he was told it would be another two weeks. You have to move back in. This is called being jerked around by the system. And one other question im over my time but these need to be answered on the record. In many instances like biloxbil mississippi, the Homeowners Insurance is so high that the basic allowance for housing isnt adequate. When i was in the air force on active duty, i was happy to go off base and use my vah and live well. Do we need to change the statute to account for higher Homeowners Insurance with vah . Thank you, mr. Chairman for that indulgen indulgence. Thank you, senator blumenthal. Thanks, mr. Chairman and thanks to you and the Ranking Member for having this hearing to follow up on our last hearing in march. Most of you were not here in that hearing, i recognize. The progress thats been made since then has been encouraging, but extremely limited. I want to thank the multipilita families that are here today, but also the countless military families who have continued to contact us directly as well to advocate for better housing and i want to highlight, matter of fact, one area where we have received complaints. Id like to know of all the complaints that you have received about retaliation. This issue is one that is moels troubling to me, retaliation for legitimate complaints ranging from Service Members being prevented from attending certain training with their unit or Military Spouses being disinvited from participating in spouse support groups. Weve heard stories about Housing Company representatives circling homes of military families in cars, making verbal threats or moving work orders to the back of the queue for families who are asking for families who need maintenance. These reports are outrageous and id like to know in writing of all the complaints received by the services. My time doesnt allow me to go into them here. These military families report to us conditions that have been chronic, repeat, recurring, endemic to their living and no doubt loss of inwacentive fees will spur some improvements. But Incentive Fees and even the bill of rights and ive been a strong advocate for the bill of rights. In my view, lack the impact that rightful criminal prosecution would have. And i know that in none of the statements presented here this morning has there been any mention of an actual referral or for criminal prosecution. Im deeply disappointed that there has been no such referral. Secretary barrett, i thank you for mentioning that in all actions where fraud is suspected, you, quote, immediately notify the air force office of special investigations and the department of justice. There has been a recent report by reuters released last month that communities fake maintenance records to pocket performance bonuses at several air force bases. The same reports have been in the misrepresentations and outright lies to everyone of the services. And id like to know from each of the services whether you have referred any cases for criminal prosecution beginning with secretary mccarthy. Not at this time, sir. Secretary . Senator, we have not done that yet, but i would like to say that a couple months ago i made a decision as the under to put a dedicated audit function within the assistant secretary solely focused on ppb to go and investigate and determine whether or not there is any such activity as you mentioned. So if there is such an incidence of that we have the ability to have data and evidence and turn that over for prosecution if necessary. Secretary barrett . As i indicated, we have investigations going on by the office of special investigations of the air force and we have where fraud has been alleged, those facts have been presented to the department, to the fbi and they would be determining whether or not to go forward with pressing charges. Have there been any referrals for prosecution as of yet . Not yet. Well, i really want to urge you and i did it in the march hearing as well. Its not a new concern on my part. In fact, in the nbaa there is language in the Senate Passed version of the nbaa to encourage these investigations which i helped to write. Ive also written to each of the Service Secretaries urging that fraudulent activity be referred to the department of justice and i would like a report within a reasonable amount oftume from each of you as to what the status of any investigations are within your department. Thank you for your attention. I know just in closing let me say i know that every one of you wants the best possibility housing for the men and women under your command. I have no doubt about your commitment but i think we need to use every tool, every possible resource to make sure that these private contractors get the message that theres a new era for military housing, thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chair. Id like to say thank you for the Witnesses Today for your committee, but more importantly i want to say thank you to the spouses, the Family Members that are here today. In the 90s i was a young army wife. N newly married into the rangers. I had a husband that deployed frequently. I can only imagine the situation that all of our Family Members went through, whether youre juggling family, children, childcare, school, a civilian job, whatever it was that you had in addition to that you had housing issues that you had to address. Because maybe your spouses were elsewhere doing what the United States federal government told them to do. Thank you to all of you. I do understand those challenges and we have to make a change. So thank you for being here. So weve talked a lot about this high level of investigations and involvement of our secretaries and so forth. What id like to hear from our chiefs is what are we doing to educate those young commanders, you know, the health and welfare of their troops, that is up to them. So while we do have other special offices that are involved, what are we doing to educate that chain of command and how they can get engaged with their troops and making sure that housing is appropriate. Secretary barrett, if we could start with you . We are in fact working on training for the commanders of the bases and the squadron commanders on the housing issue and on medical issues so that theres better understanding. That would be passed on to each of the members of the multiple. General, did you have any more to add . Yes, maam. After this issue came up, i hosted a conference with all of our Wing Commanders in the United States air force, thats active guard, reserve, civilian leaders, 278 strong. What i shared with them was there are certain things we have to do as leaders that are nothing short of skacred duty. One of those is making sure everyone is properly equipped and when they come home weve taken care of their families. You cant delegate that. Thats command team business. In every echelon of command now we have training not only their responsibilities but also on the tools they have available to get to senator blumenthals point to make sure we have all the tools available and were pushing the Decision Authority down to where they can make the most difference. Absolutely, thank you. You point about the change of command is really important. They both have a key role as you pointed out. The installation, this is what they do every day and they focus on it. I would say accurate prior to the spring they were not educated on how to interface with their key partners and what laborers they had when they werent performing. The unit chain of command what is what was focused on i think we didnt look the other way, but im not sure that all of our commanders act pretty confident. Most did not understand they understand their role in leading their troops and everything they do and fail to do, but not when their housing situation isnt working right. What are they supposed to do . Now thats part of our commanders course. You could argue it should have been beforehand, now it is. I think on your point about education has to be there. It cant be one time, it cant be in 2019. This is something we have to sustain. Thank you. Admiral . Yes, maam. So thinking about the core issue here, really the root cause of what drove us to where we are right now. I think a big part of that was mindset. T the fact we missed responsibility for those things were accountable for. I think the other thing that went hand in glove with that was the fact we never codified responsibilities, including oversight for commanders. So like the marine corp, we now have formalized forces for all of our commanders, executive officers, senior enlisted. Even more importantly right now, recognizing that most of the progress weve made to date is grounded on good leadership that allowing or enabling commanders at every level and their senior enlisted to understand what the processes are, what the right levers are to pull so that when a sailor and his family has an issue, we can respond immediately and not put it on the back burner. Thank you. General, if you have anything to add briefly, please . Yes, weve outsourced, but not outsourced responsibility. Every leader is responsible for their soldiers, they understand that and theyre addressing these problems. I tthank you. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thanks to our witnesses. I want to thank the military families who have been important in this effort. Secretary, thank you. Yesterday secretary mccarthy asked me to accompany him and we saw two houses there that had really Serious Problems. There are 15 communities in it. Some houses are 1940s and 50s and some are ten years old. We visited two communities that are new communities. We saw a family who were continually told they didnt have a mold problem. The husband had skills and had fixed some mold. He was being told there was not a problem and there was. He couldnt get a response until he said the place is unsafe, we need to move out. Then the Housing Company jumped into action. Second family was having their home repaired. The spouse noticed that they werent bringing any new ins insulation into the home. They were supposed to clear out a mold situation. They told her they had done it. She noted that no insulation had been brought into the home. Open the wall, i think youre lying to me. The wall was opened up and the old installation that was dirty had been put back in and it was soaking wet. They hadnt fixed the water problem behind the wall. This was six months after we had the hearing. Secretary mccarthy was not happy with this when hes heard these stories, nor was the Garrison Commander. I think weve identified two main problems, the military chain of command advocated responsibility for this. The contracts were entered into. I can understand. There were priorities that maybe assumed front of mind and other priorities that didnt get the attention they deserve and they need to now get. Secondly, these housing companies, they had a double standard. The double standard was they operate in the private sphere and they have to compete hard to make sure they have high occupancy rates. If they treat their private tenants badly theyll go elsewhere. But the military tentants are like captives. People who move from across the country to a place where they dont know anyone, dont know anything about the rental market, theyre trying to find new schools and get accustomed to everything else. Theres a tendency to want to live on base. These companies who would compete hard and try to produce high quality product in another Business Unit of the identical company treat these folks as if theyre captives and they dont have to treat them in the same way they would treat private tenants. I find that outrageous. I want to ask ms. Field a question about your testimony. I find a couple things about it pretty shocking. The 87 satisfaction, thats in a report that congress demands, so its a report to congress. I feel misled. Im trying to determine whether im intentionally misled. If you read ms. Fields testimony, youll understand her conclusion is that data is unreliable. Osd gave an instruction to the military departments that in the annu annual Satisfaction Survey they were asked the question would you recommend housing . Instead the departments on the survey, they didnt ask that question. They asked this question, how much do you agree or disagree with the following statements, i would recommend this community to others. I would recommend this community to others. A reasonable person reading that question wouldnt think its a question about housing. What does that mean, neighborhood . Fairfax county . Northern virginia . If people have a problem with housing, it could factor into their answer. But the answer to that question is 87 tells us precisely nothing about what people think about their housing. If i understand your report correctly, the multiple department didnt ask the question the osc told them to ask. I understand from a footnote that in 2019 theyre going to ask the question they should have asked all along, are you satisfied with the condition of your unit. Thats the question that you need to ask to have a statistic an answer you can count on. But the answer to the question of would you recommend this community to others tells us exactly nothing about housing. So i definitely feel misled by this 87 number. Im going to conclude, you raise a really important point that we may need to grapple with this at committee. If the companies, because of the dates in these contracts and their bond arrangements, structured the finances around a 7 , 8 Interest Rate and right now if they could refinance and refinance for a much lower rate and free up capital it would be used to capitalize improvements in military housing, we should be doing what we can in a fiscally responsible manner to allow the refinancing of these contracts with the expectation that some of the money thats freed up with the refinancing could be plowed back into housing. Probably refinance our own houses during times of low Interest Rates and weve been able to do what the military and these Housing Providers have been able to do. I hope we might explore as a committee if theres a fiscally sound way we could use those monies to perform improvements. Thank you, mr. Chair. I want to thank you for being here and worried about the housing for our families. Ms. Field, you said in your testimony there was changes that if we could make those changes it would have a big impact. Is there legislation we can pass right now that would force changes that would positively Impact Housing for these families . Senator, i think the most important thing that this committee can do is to keep the pressure on both the services as well as the partners. A lot of the things that are in, for example, the bill of rights are things that could be done now. They dont have to be legislatively mandated. Its really that pressure that you can exert that would probably be most impactful. Theres no legislation you need that the services need right now that would change the housing . I dont want to state that categorical categorically, but i would say some of the things that probably would be most helpful or not things that can be mandated because they have to do with the legal agreements between the services and the private partners. We can pass legislation that require the private companies to change, right . We could pass i believe that would still require negotiation with the partners because of the existing standing legal agreements, many of which are 50 year agreements. So for all the secretaries whats the limitations in issuing the bill of rights today . Is there any limitation . Senator, theres a couple issues related to the nbaa language that we have that are different than the departments position. Specifically, ill cite two examples with a dispute, we need to hire a third party mediator. Another one would be on whether or not the army could have on post Quality Assurances to inspect homes through legal liabilities because we dont own the assets. We could step out, but we want to do it with the congress and have the support of the congress, sir. Senator scott, just let me add to that the the secretaries have agreed on the tenant bill of rightsing weve negotiated with the partners. Were ready to go and decide. Were being differential to the committee and what theyre trying to put in legislation. Thats exactly the same with the air force, were ready to go. But dont want to issue something today but then lies in contrast with what the the nbaa why dont we just do it and then change it. We could, but i think that for our troops wed rather aeor airmen would would rather have a consistency. Can you take those dollar and mitigate the problem . Are you allowed to do that . A private contract, i can go spend the dollars and eventually get the money back. Do you have the ability to do that under existing contracts . You want to take the dollars, any dollars, take for sure the performance dollars. Ive got 15 homes that need mold repair, take the money and spend it, could you do that . Get the answer for that specifically, im not familiar enough with what the contract what the negotiations with the partners say. But when the fees are not paid out, they are stayed within the service. I have to look and see exactly what our legal rights are in terms of what we can do with that. I dont know the answer, but well get the answer, sir. Im not sure of the contract language on whether thats held in escrow or withheld, but not available to the officair force. We have spent 25 million in remediation that is may be brought against that, the contract. You know senator, its my understanding the funding thats held in escrow, but i dont think it could be converted for other projects. Will you find out when you get back and let me know . Yes, sir. Why would you spend those dollars if you could do it get away from the money you had to give the companies. Have any of the Companies Said to yall they dont have the financial wherewithal to make the changes . Yes, sir. I mean, the last discussion we specifically addressed how do we increase the ceiling on capital for investment. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement, a third of our housing is going to be required for recapitalization. We need substantial more funding. You have economics from the mid 90s. So theyre never going to fix this . They dont have the capital to do it and they we have to do the general and i sent a level to the director of Office Management to change the scoring criteria on projects. If they can get lower Interest Rates and they have a desire to do that, obviously, from a business perspective. But to increase the capital to be much more aggressive on investment projects. Let me interject that we have had the bill of rights language in the Defense Authorization bill. Our problem is we have been bogged down mostly because of the house. Were dealing with an absolute deadline now. Of course that language is in there. It was our thinking at that time to not encourage the bill of rights to be put together until we had a chance to do that in the ndaa. You sure think they could take the money thats being held in on performance and go spend it to fix the problem these companies are responsible for. That makes sense. Senator . Thank you, chairman. I want to start by saying i share senator kaines frustration with the data weve been given and how that data has been characterized. We need to understand as ms. Field points out exactly what the situation is and the way questions have been asked is really obscure. I want to ask each of you, one, are you currently as serving secretaries, are you asking the question that osd suggested that you ask that would you recommend Privatized Housing . In addition, are you asking the question that was also referenced in the gao report, are you satisfied with the condition of your housing unit . Yes, senator, were making the changes. And is that current, or is that in process . I believe its in process, sir. Senator, were looking at that as well to insure that the surveys are asking the right questions in terms of whats happened in the past, in terms of how we followed the guidance of osd, i dont have information about that. I will say we did an out of cycle survey immediately after this situation came to the forefront last year, and we discovered we actually had much lower rates than we had thought before. So i think were looking at this and we want to make sure this is my point i made earlier about data and understanding what the data is telling us and making sure were asking the right questions and measuring these gdp partners properly. I will say i think ms. Field and the gao were able to get to the heart of a lot of data very quickly and to implement other tools like focus groups to understand the nature of this problem. And all of us up here need to be able to have reliable consistent data. For the remaining two secretaries, id also ask, are you asking those two questions today, or when will you be asking those two questions . Senator, we are asking questions as directed by the secretary in the form that is the requested form. One of the key issues on the data is that we really are challenged when we dont disaggregate the data, when you put it all together it looks like 87 sounds like a really good number. Thats 90 plus percent on many bases, but its much much lower and thats where we really need to focus our attention. When we aggregate the data, its harder to find the real answers and real problems. Secretary mccarthy, you mentioned the need to fix the model. I think those were your words. But we also heard a third of housing is in Poor Condition. So, you know, it forces me to ask the question, whats the privatization our military housing a mistake . To put that another way, do we at least need to take a step back and analyze whether this model is actually working for our men and women in uniform . Senator, if we hadnt privatized, we would not have been able to bring the Investment Capital to bear to have the current housing portfolio in the shape its in, 13 billion worth of investment has been put in place since 1996. We wouldnt have had those funds, for example. I think that the challenges over a 50 year relationship, you have to adjust over time. The flexibility of contract, the manner in which to restructure debt when Economic Conditions are better. You have to present these opportunities so that thats where the challenges do we have the tools and knowledge built into your services to actually implement those contracts, to hold people to account . Those things happen every day in private real estate business. Thats not an expertise that is necessarily something that i think the services have spent a lot of time thinking about. And if were not doing that, we certainly owe it to the men and women who live in these homes to get that right. Great question, senator. It really hits home, the point the secretary made before, our ability to analyze the deprecia depreciating assets. Were capturing the data to know the health of these homes. The oversight Quality Assurance requires more resources but also to your point the right skill sets associated to manage that. We are in many cases we need to improve across the board in all those areas. Senator, i think it was absolutely the right decision at the time to go in this direction. As secretary mccarthy said we would not have been able to recapitalize these at this time. We did it. It does not mean its worked out great. I think i would say its not horrible performance, but its a very uneven performance. Theyve lived in Privatized Housing and it was fantastic. Going and visited several different base and some of it is fantastic and some of it is not. The problem we have is really understanding the differences because we dont have good access and visibility into whats actually going on. On a unit by unit basis, when you accumulate data and it says 87 , what about the people who arent happy . How are we finding out about that . Not how are we fishixing it. Right were finding out about it sometimes a year after its happened. We need to be much more a Real Time Monitoring of this problem. And thats what were trying to do. We certainly have the tools to do it. The data is being captured. Once we have that and we have real time information, we can act a lot more appropriately and a lot more quickly. We certainly have the tools to do that, given some of the tools that exist because of the revolution in technology weve seen. We can address this. I think the model needs tweaking and as secretary mccarthy said, maybe some structural challenges with the debt that we need to look at as well. This is a problem where you outsource something i think there is a cultucultural shift. Its going to be our problem to worry about the health and well being of our multiple families. We have to reinforce those messages and im sure we will. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i also want to recognize our military families that are here today. Its hard enough to serve in the military, be the spouse of someone who serves in the military, but you add onto the challenges were talking about here today and the types of stories weve heard from what families have had to put up with. As someone who has served myself, this pisss me off. What you endure is hard enough. Aits leadership issue. I appreciate our Service Leaders being here today. This is a leadership issue by the companies. In america we just came back past veterans day, were very patriotic, we want to say thank you for your service, yet climate and culture in these companies starts at the top. The culture they have from the top all the way down, whether theyre going to be responsive 24 7 to the needs of those families, whether theyre going to do whatever they can to make sure theyre addressing the health and welfare of these families, thats a climate issue. Maybe some of the ceos need to move into some military housing over the holidays, what do you think about that . See how they feel about trying to figure out where theyre going to put up their Christmas Tree or where theyre going to be serving christmas dinner. Thank you for all your work on this. Theres basically 14 companies that have been involved in privatized military housing. Are any of them not acting like slum lords at this point . Are any of them doing a good job . Any of them . Senator, i wouldnt want to characterize any individual company as good across the board or bad across the board. I would say that at almost every installation we visited we found that the military housing officials on the ground were extremely frustrated with the private partner personnel on the ground. Were not getting the cooperation or support they needed. There are some exceptions, which id be happy to talk about. I think its fair to say weve discussed earlier whether tenants are satisfied at 87 rate or not. Theres clearly a problem here. One thing, you know, i read in some of the testimony is that sometimes families were confused when they went to the office as to who was the advocate for them thats paid by the taxpayer and who is actually a representative of the slum lord. Maybe they can wear tee shirts that say slum lord on it and identify themselves as to whether theyre with the company or housing office. There has to be some sort of id encourage our Service Chiefs to ask them to do that. They need to know whos who that theyre not talking to a contractor making a complaint. Theres a trifecta. Theres the command team, theres the Housing Management officer, and the office and then theres the privatized owner. All three of those have to be engaged. Where we have good engagement with those three, ownership and responsiveness its working. When one of those is not there, it doesnt work. Family needs to happen that whether theyre talking to somebody who is representing the Company Versus somebody who is supposed to be their advocate. Do you guys agree . Im trying to get audience engagement here. One other factor is, we put language in as youre trying to hire more individuals in the housing offices to be advocates is to prioritize spouses for those positions. I dont think we need nbaa language to that. Is that something that services are looking to do. Theyre at a depression level unemployment as well. This is something theyve been working on this committee as well related to Military Spouse unemployment. Quickly i bet you would have spouses that would love to serve in that role. Secretary esper prioritized that early on in his tenure to give the opportunity, preference for hiring opportunities on the installation. Positions that are open that are unfilled right now though that would quickly be used with the filled with Military Spouses . Anybody want to jump in . To jum in . Weve added 300 additional positions. This is one of the problems we discovered. To your point, we didnt feel like we had enough advocates out there, so were added 300. Were in the process of hiring them. Were also waiting on the appropriations bill to pass so we can fill those positions. But prioritizing Military Spouses is something were going to do. Secondary barrett . We have established new positions and those would be great jobs for Military Spouses. So thanks. Im almost out of time, but i want to just make sure everybody understands that the ndaa is being held up for political games. The defense appropriations bill is being held up for political reasons that have nothing to do with our troops, so i just want to make sure everybody understands that without an ndaa and without the defense appropriations bill, the level that we have agreed to or have been fighting for, this is going to hurt fixing some of these issues. Can i get a yes from everybody . Thank you. So lets get everybody on both sides of the al to vote those out and get them done this week. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank the secretaries and chiefs and families and advocates who are here. This is a continuing addressing of a concern that is going to be ongoing. And as you noted, we have to vigilant. Not just today, tomorrow, going forward. So, miss field, you said that the department cant make unilateral changes to these longterm contracts to address some of these issues that have been brought forth. Can you give me an example of a limitation and contract that would make it really difficult for the department of defense to unilaterally make the change or require a change . Sure, senator. So, most of the agreements although not all, do have a performance Incentive Fee built into the agreement. What weve determined through our work is that a number of the metrics that underlie those fees are not good ways to measure the condition or quality of the home so theyre looking at things like rewarding the partner for occupancy rate , which doesnt have anything to do with the condition of the home or timelyness and reporting. Our understanding is that to change those underlying metrics as written in the agreements, the partners will have to agree with the services. None for habitability . When we looked, fe found they were more focused on the health and project as opposed to the quality and condition of the home and holding the partner accountable for that. So for the secretaries or chiefs, are any of your agreements relating to habitability of the units . Is there anything that allows you to, to negotiate regarding habitability in any of your contracts . Anybody can answer. Senator, the metrics, the incentive award fees it referenced, across all, first off. The second, i dont know if its on any of the installations we had today, as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, we are changing the incentive award structure and starting this on january 1st. So youre able to change the incentive structure by focusing on habitability even if somehow theres not reference to that in your longterm contract . We have to, weve back to the partners and are changing the fees. We had to go back to the partners to do that. And are you partners cooperating with changing the matrix . Its been a negotiation, but thats how were initiating it january 1st. What about the others, secretaries . Obviously were here because of the non habitability of some of these units. Its a huge issue so are you imposing habitability as a factor in your incentive payments . Yes, were going through that process just as secretary mccarthy said. Weve restructured our fee and prior to this, we did not have that health and habitability thing, but now we will and our partners have worked with us on this and they are accepting that. We have, we are in the process of restructuring our Incentive Fees and so that will include elements of a commanders overview or observation. Habitability would be one of the elements they would put. In addition, 100 of our units have had a health and safety review prior to people moving in. And so that habitability would be another word for the health and safety of that. Yes, im using the word habitability to cover broad range of issues of concerns to all of us. There was a mention made that the data is not, the data is input in such a way that its not terribly helpful in terms of whats going on. What are you doing to make sure, for one thing, shouldnt all of the contracts, these housing contracts be the same in terms of the, the terms of the contract across the services . Miss field, can you answer yes or no on that one . Well because they were entered into at different times and services, they were created with different temperatures and Different Levels of accountab accountability built into them. Okay, thats a problem, but be that as it may. What about the data, the insufficientsy of the data . Do the rest of you agree that that is an issue . Anybody . Of course, senator. Weve addressed that at the quarterly discussions and that process starting to improve. And we do agree that the data is an issue and disaggregate in it, working to improve the quality of the data is one of the key things that were looking at. May i ask just one more follow up question with secretary mccarthy. So the question of the housing that you went to see with, with senator cane, very clearly that if theyre putting back molding that shouldnt have been put back, that sounds like fraud to me. So you had testified that you did not refer any matter e for prosecution. Is that the thing that you are considering sending on for prosecution . Senator, we after what i saw yesterday, i was very concerned and it is something that i addressed specifically with the general and were going to take a r very hard look at that. Yes, maam. Please do so and that goes for all the services. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman and i want to thank the chairman and ranking for the participation today. Ive been here five years. Ive never seen a panel of military leadership that we have today. I think that sends a message to the families, but also says how serious this problem is so i want to thank everybody r for beinger here. I have a question for the panel and your staffs here. If youve ever lived in base housing anytime in your kcareer would you raise your hand, please . Theres the issue. These people understand. I grew up in base housing. I understand what it means to be dislocated. This is unacceptable whats happening right now, but i want to understand, i want everybody in this hearing to understand the hypocrisy that youve heard this morning. Were pointing fingers at contractors. Yes, theres kulpaablety there and it needs to be dealt with. Theres leadership issues maybe within the dod, needs to be dealt with, but the one thing were not talking about is responsibility we have here in congress. This is the third month, the end of the First Quarter of our fiscal year. We have not funded our men and women in uniform, period. We can talk about a continuing resolution all we want to, but weve sent a message to putin and xi and everybody else in the world that political gains here are more important than our men and women in uniform. Thats unacceptable and it directly affected housing capability. The u. S. Army did a study recently that you guys said that specifically right now, 4,400 new units are being held up from construction because of this continuing resolution. By the way, this is like the tenth out of 11 years, this is the tenth year that the First Quarter has been spent under a continuing resolution where no contracts can be at. No follow up can be made. No accountability accomplished. I think there are 269 other maintenance Housing Units for Something Like 69 million, which i dont understand those numbers. Thats 250,000 a unit. So somewhere offline i want to get at these numbers because it dubt make any sense but u would you give us an update on get tig this problemics fixed . On military construction for barricks projects, senator, about 239 million held up. 73 million joint base langley, 55 million. So bare riricks is being impact. The Family Housing projects overseas. Im sorry to interrupt. We can do this all day. I dont want to give you guy us a pass, but i want full accountability here and we bear the brunt of this. If we funded this prior to september, the continuity of the programs could be continuing. I want the people being affected to understand that the fix cant be accomplished slons these political games are being played right now and the point i want to make. So can you give us the other impact that maybe caused by this, this insidious practice that we have here . 187 times since the, the budget act was put in place in 1976, this is our 187th continuing resolution. It devastates you guys and hurts these families. Can you give us more detail around that . 1. 1 billion been requested specifically on housing restoration. What does that mean . We cannot start the projects. We cannot initiate the projects. We dont have a fund. So the projects underway, does it afblgt achkt those . In some cases. So theyre being affected right now . Any new projects then existing ones are being fund ed at the previous levels so they are, the buying power is reduced, yes, sir. Thank you. I visited benning, one of our great heritage sites in the country, really. Happens to be in my home state of georgia. Ive got red clay under these nails like you do im sure from your time in that part of our state. I just met with general brita down there. Hes doing a fabulous job. Theres a different problem in columbus. You have these historic homes. They have lead. Problems asbestos before. Give us an update on how that that lead problem is being dealt with. By the way, we deploy a significant percentage of our men and women, we have a significant percentage across more than 100 countries right now today. So on most of our people are on these bases have a spouse overseas. And so can you help us understand the progress being made there and the displacement that weve incur ed there and what with we can expect . Yeah, first of all, on the historical homes. Weve taken the philosophy old is not historical. What i mean by that is you know we have homes we have to replace them or restore them to the level they were before. Maybe a house thats 100 years old that a captain live d in. We have houses like this all over the place from 50 to 100 years old. We dont want to restore them with the original materials. Were working our way through that. We think we have a way ahead so we dont have to go back and get original materials so we can modernize these homes. I grew up in an old home. 100 years old, but its old. N its not historic. What we need to do is is mode modernize them what we need for the families. As you know, were going through the homes right now. Lead is a huge issue. We are very, very concerned with our families. We are going back and getting these homes and remediating with homes, but it takes time. I think were working about eight to nine homes a week and its going to take us some time. Two to three years with these homes to get them to the level we want them to be. Would you get your staff to keep us updated about the progress of that project specifically because i think thats a bellwether of all the bases out there. We will. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, with chairs permission, im going to yield a couple of minutes to senator manchin whos got to leave for a Committee Hearing. Thank you. This is to the secretaries and miss field to you. Listening to the concerns we have, theres not a person up here, im sure you feel the same way, who are not concerned. Service members should have better quality of life and their families. Homeowners association is something im familiar with and it works this way. Youre a developer. Youre the developer. Any of you all the developers. When you have the governance and turn it over after a period of time to the homeowners, we have the responsibility to basically evaluate. Are you doing your job or not . Have you lived up to your part of the bargain when it was turned over and we have the right to bring civil actions against you. Why cant we do the same here . Every member of the service and their family that moves into one of the homes, basically would be part of the homeowners association. That association develops their own board and are able to bring civil suit if they havent performed. Thats the best way to do it. Bert than what the military and everybody else e. Well spend millions of dollars for people on the front line who can tell you immediately and if youre the contractor thats rewarded basically one of these exclusive contracts for 50 years, then you have u a responsible lty. If thats the responsibility and you havent lived up to it, let it go to civil court. Not military court. Youll never have this problem. This will limit and remedy this immediately. And we can put this right into the bill of rights. Mr. Chairman, we could do this as were going now and it will basically take care of a remedy of how you can cure this, quickly. And theyll step up to the plate. They dont want these civil lawsuits brought against them. Thats my input. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im, mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman, thank you, senator manchin. Two comments before i ask a couple of questions. Number one, i agree with is that right purdue completely about the cr and about where we are and the politics and ndaa and appropriatio appropriations. I just dont want there to be any impression of anybody in this room that the politics that are being played is only on one side of the aisle. We need to get it done. I agree with him. We need to get it done. The second thing id like to comment on is im hearing a lot in these hearings where these companies are being referred to as our partners. Theyre not our partners. They provide a service. We pay them for their service. Theyre not a partner where theres a give and take and issues like that. They are providing a service to these people and their military and families and we should be demanding and make sure that were demand iing that they deliver the Excellent Services that were paying them for and that we dont consider them a partner like i would my spouse or a law partner. They are providing services. Now just with the time remaining, id like to ask each of the secretaries, secretary mccarthy, youve mentioned general perna. Im a big fan of him. I commend you for getting him engaged in this because we can g he can get it done. When we had the companies here, one of the things i asked if they would withhold, Incentive Fees. I think you mentioned the general is working on that. Has any Incentive Fees been withheld yet or is that still part of the process . Yes, sir, weve withheld fees at ft. Benning and mccord. So youve got a process in place for that . Yes, its being formalized on the 1st of january, but some of these instances were pretty extreme. Weve done that just in the last couple of months. How about the navy . Senator, we have not given an award fee incentive e ffee this year. Were evaluating those. Is there a process in place to withhold Incentive Fees now . There is. How about the air force . Senator, we are withholding all fees from one contractor on the basis of misperformance or performance problems on some of their bases. And the other contractors, were observing their performance and they are aware of the contract withholding fee, the process, the fact were withholding fees on others. Thank you all three. I think thats a good step. I will say secretary barrett, im still hearing issues. Identi ive visited t eed maxwell air base and there are still issues with Historical Properties and constituents having Serious Problems so please take a look. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. And special thanks to the military families who are in attendance. I back in march when we had the last hearing, i didnt have a very happy discussion because we had a revelation come up about these nondisclosure agreements that the Housing Providers were requiring the n tenants to sign on to before theyd settle anything. Seemed to be a legitimate complaint. At that time, i asked everybody to go back and make sure over the next 30 days to have all those ndas rescinded and if there was any private property Housing Provider that thought they had a great case to call me up and come to my office and explain to me why they should have these agreements. I had nobody come to my office. I thought that i was assured these had been rescinded, but this week, ive got an email, another nondisclosure agreement from monterey bay where the practice has continued at least up until august and secretary mccarthy, well have a discussion about this because its in your lane, but look, when i was, miss fields, i think when you were responding to senator cains question about the Satisfaction Surveys. If you have a nondisclosure agreement that says you cant speak even about the existence of the agreement and you cant speak disparagingly about the Housing Provider, then how does the answer to that question go . Thats a great question. Right. Which is why these damn things have to be eliminated. Now i want to ask you all know. Can i get your assurance that you can go through chain of command and go to your Housing Providers and say this ends immediately and if you think you have a legitimate reason for having one, contact me. Id love to hear the basis for that. I dont think there can be one. I want your assurances to move forward with this. This is a part of the problem. Like, i have tried to be balanced every time i come in here. If the you look at it when these contracts started getting initiated back in 1996, you were moving, conveying property owned by the government to a private Housing Provider, they were to fix some of the. The old units, maybe upfit them. They were to build new units and they had to make a financial decision that ultimately resulted in an investment that private sector investors invested in. Great. Hopefully they made a good decision. It may have been that in some cases, they didnt know what they were buying. Everybody that flips a house, sometimes you buy something and it worked out well and sometimes it didnt. There may be a rational basis to go back to some of these Housing Providers and say look, we may have sold you a bill of goods and we have some responsibility for trying to smooth out the economic consequences of that decision. In other cases, theyve built houses that are the subject of the problem. We owe them not a dime to fix that. Thats on them. So my question to you all is when is enough enough . When do we finally look at these contracting mentors and say you know, its time just to recognize that youre in breach of contract. We got to go a different way your Business Practices are to a point where weve got to go to a court of law and settle this. When is enough enough . Secretary mccarthy think . We might be there right now, sir. Secretary mobley. Senator, i think that in certain cases, we may be there. In other cases, i think theres pretty heavy responsibility on the navy and knavery leadership over the last couple of years in terms of not paying attention to it. Secretary barrett. Senator, enough is enough. We have had enough. On some of these properties, they have worn out the patience of the air force. In other instances, theyre doing a great job and were i agree and i dont want to go too far over time, but i want to be fair. I dont want to all of a sudden let our passions sweep up people, sweep up private Housing Providers that seem to be doing a good job trending in the right direction. But we probably need to make an example out of a couple of them and just draw the line and move forward. And in the other case, go back and figure out, secretary ryan, i think youre right. If we dont look at recapitalization, im not one who thinks we should take this back over and go to the old bwas because it wasnt working. Senator purdues points are well taken. Then you have to rely on us to give you resources and hows that work ed out for you. So i think it makes more sense to provide certainty by having these contracts in place, but we have to look at recapitalization. We have to go back and rationalize what is a, what should be a consistent model to the senators point. I know these contracts were e negotiated over time and there were differences. Some we some were learning from the past contracts, but at some point, weve got to go back and reopen this and aggressively pursue it. I dont know what other members have done, but ive had town halls at camp lejeune, fort bragg. Ive met with hundreds of military families down on those two bases and things are improve tl ing there, but i had one spouse dive up from fort ben ining and she said we were here when you all really started shining a light at fort bragg but now im at benning and its not good. Sounds like its improve, but i would encourage all my colleagues in the senate and house and to go on base and cast light on these folks. It makes a difference. Were making progress, but not as quickly as we should and i really do believe its time to draw a line with some of these vendors and some of these contracts and say enough is enough. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Miss field, dont want to step on your recognition, senator ti tillis. Which is appropriate. Miss field, i want to get to sort of basic question. Are these contracts adequate or inadequate . Is the problem the contracts or the enforcement of the contracts . I think its both, senator. In many cases, the contracts were not written in such a way that the services could truly hold the partners accountable for everything they should be holding them accountable for. I want to follow up u on the senators question. I cant believe that the fu fundamental nature of the contract doesnt require that the contractor and by the way, i agree with senator, these arent partners that contractors. Banish that word, will you . Quit refer tog them as partners. Theyre contractors. That i cant believe the basic requirement wasnt safe and healthy, habitable units. What were we buying . The companies are required to comply with all federal, state and local Environmental Health and safety codes, so thats a requirement in all of the contracts and to your second point, i think part of what we have found through our ongoing review is that the sfervices at many of the installations have not done everything they could perform oversight to make sure that was happening. When it comes to incentives to really get the companies to pay attention, thats where there are problems. But i dont think they should be even paid basic rent if theyre not renting safe and habitable units. Forabout incentives. The services do have the option of rescinding these contracts and that is an option available to them. My experience in this kind of work is that implementation is as important as vision and my sense is there are differences in the contracts, but theyre clearly as you say, basic provisions that they have to be safe and healthy. They have to meet codes and that the, i believe not having seen the contracts myself, but i believe this is really mostly an implementation problem. And then my question is whos in charge . Is it the base commander . Is it a base housing officer . Is it the secretary of the navy . Is it the secretary of defense . Theres got to be somebody who can be held accountable here in what looks like indemic non enforcement. If i may, it is the Service Secretaries that signed the agreements with the companies, so i would say that this Service Secretaries are ultimately responsible. Ultimately responsible means not so responsible. I want somebody that can be fired. Well i think that would have to be done on a case by case basis, but i want to point out two examples of where there was a break in leadership at camp lejeune for example and at tiner air force base, we learned from the military houses offices that they had recommended two senior leaderships to withhold either part of all of the performance incentive for years and had never gotten support for that. So thats an example of where there was a break in leadership. Was that the base command or was it regional command . Where i think part of the, part of something you all should do, the secretaries is assign somebody whos in charge of this. And hold them accountable. I dont know whether it can be a one person at each base. Or it can be somebody in the department or in the army, the air force, the neviaeh vi, but somebodys fot to, we have this diverse, diffuse responsibility and therefore nobody really is held responsible. Can these things like secretary mccarthy, youve talked about the bill of rights. Can that be imported into these agreements without permission if you will or negotiation with the contractors . Is that something that can just be stuck into the agreements . We had to work through the language with the companies in question, senator. With respect to your earlier comment, it is chain of command on the installation commanders had not been in the armys case, had not been empowered. Wouldnt that be the lonl cal place . Seems to me the base commander would be the logical place to lodge this responsibility. The senior commanders are now back part of the process and they rate the commander who manages the housing relations. Is that true in other dmts . Im getting a yes. Let the record show affirmative nods. Final question. Sort of a detailed question on this. Refinancing. I dont understand why they need our permission to e refinance. People refinance all the time. If rates have gone down, they can go in, raise more capital. Whats the hold up there . In the contract, they have to have a scoring criteria for the projects. Thats manage d by the Office O Management and budget. We would like to rescind the memorandum from the 90s so we can adjust the scoring criteria so they can go back to Capital Markets to raise the capital. So this is something within the control of the government. We can fix that. Does it take an act of congress . No, senator, were working with the office of management and budget on that. Would you let us know . Yes, i will. Please. Thank you all very much and i would like for the record, statements from the secretaries about where you are lodging the responsibility for the enforcement of these contracts. The name of the person, the position. And what the arrangements are to be sure that the enforcement takes place. You can have the best contract in the world if its not enforced and implemented properly, people are going to suffer for it and thats whats happened in the case. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Do any of you feel thats an unreasonable expectation . We recorded the nods. Affirmative nods. Yes. Thank you, mr. Chairman i want sto start by thanking the military families who are r here first of all for your service to this country. Thank you for the sacrifices youve made. Your Service Members, your Family Members. Thank you for doing what youve done to defend this country. Thank you for r being here today, for making the trek and for showing up and for advocating. I want to say that what you have been through after the service that you have rendered to this country is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable. It wouldnt be acceptable for anybody to be treated like this in this way, but for you as Service Members and families who are sacrificing day in and day out for this country, to have been through what youve been through is really a breach of faith. In cwhat this country owes to you, so thank you for being here. Im sorry for what youve been through and you have my commitment that my office and i will do everything we can to see that this does not continue. So thank you for being here. Let me ask you a few questions specifically about ft. Leonardwood in my home state of missouri. I want to start by saying that many military families in missouri are worried that base housing on those installations may still be a risk. I want to thank the base leadership at both of those for doing their part to ensure that our Service Members are getting high eququality on base housing. But let me ask about the concerns that military families in the state have expressed to me. In particular, military families in missouri have raised concerns to me that as ball four baby and other companies shift their attention to fix problems in other states, that companies, those Companies Might take their eyes off the ball in missouri and let things slip. So secretary mccarthy, barrett, let me ask you in particular, what are you services doing to ensure that ft. Leonardwood and whiteman, respectively, will not be shortchanged as these companies reallocate resources to assess these glaring deficiencies elsewhere. Go ahead, secretary barrett, well start with you. Ballfour baby has had very poor performance in some settings, but very fine performance in others. The base commander having responsibility and authority over the housing topic will mean that there would be careful attention given to the local base by the local leadership. So distractions by outside other element, by other at other bases will not be a distraction from the performance atman. Thank you. Secretary. We are watching it very closely, senator, and will ensure theres no change with the performance if anything, to improve it. Thank you. Let me ask both of you again. Families in my state have also raised concerns about insufficient rights for Service Members who live off base. And with that in mind, i want to ask you what the army is doing to ensure the military families had access to high quality housing in missouri and elsewhere. Can you address that . With specifically to missouri, you know, i would have to get back to you on that, stir sir, but in other instances like yesterday, ft. Belvoir with respect to benning and bragg and others ive visit ed over the last 90, 100 days, they work very hard with the local communities to get additional opportunities for off base housing. So were doing this in all of our installations and ill get back to you on what were doing at ft. Leonardwood. Thank you. Can i ask you the same question in railroads to whiteman . Well, off base housing is covereded. Theres an allowance that members get and maybe the chief would have further detail on that. Yes, sir. As you know, we do routine Housing Allowance surveys and we go out and look at the basic allowance for housing. Its something that the Service Secretaries all signed a memo to governors last year. It was a really important memo that said as we were looking at your bases, there are two issues that are top shelf for our families. And that is number one, reciprocity of licenses for spouses so as they move around the country, they can continue to work. Secondly, the quality of their schools. That letter has had a fairly Significant Impact so i want to thank this committee for all the work thats been done because its improved the quality of life for our spouses. Thank you. In my time remaining, let me, miss field, ask you. At the current rate of decline of the housing inventory, im wonderful iring if you think the program is financially viable and will survive the full 50year term . The department has determined that the mhpi portfolio across the board is healthy. We issued a report last year where we found that while the services had good mechanisms in place to assess the financial strength of the projects in the near term, they dont in the longterm so i think your concern is well founded. Quite frank ly though, what concerns me more is that there are more mechanisms in place for the services to assess the Financial Health of the project and hold the partners accountable for Financial Health than there are for assessing and holding them accountable for the quality of the housing. Thank you for that. Thats a very, very important point and something we have to rectify. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator duckworth. Yeah, i just dont buy this argument that the chain of command cant really be held accountable in the past because we havent empowered them to enforce these contracts. Because by nature of being in command or especially being a garrisen commander, youre responsible. I mean if you have troops in barricks where they come to nearly complain that the ceiling is collapsing and hurting these soldiers and that Garrison Commander did nothing about it, youd hold him accountable. If you had a tank gunnery range, an aerial gunnery range or door gunnery range that was constantly hconstant ly hurting the troops operating that range and that range wasnt up to standard, that commander would be held responsible for whatever contractor held this range for you and keeping it safe for our troops to use. So i dont understand why not a single Garrison Commander to my knowledge has yet been fired over a failure to maintain these standards, period. Thats the past. Lets look forward. Id like to ask each of the Service Chiefs. Is maintaining the highest quality of housing for your troops and their Family Members a line item on every persons evaluation report all the way up the chain for Garrison Commanders up to and including yourself . Right now. Is it, this is a line. Senator, its not. Its at the flag level. Were looking at doing it at the 06 level and below. So no so far. No. How many years has it been . Why is it not . Sorry. No. Well i would like to recommend that it be one on there. For every single Garrison Commander and all the way up to and including the Service Chiefs because until youre being evaluated on it, you can just walk away and ive looked. I cant find a Single Person whos been fired over this. You look like you want to say something. S s i do. With all due respect to secretary mccarthy, its important to point out that in 2013, the army issued clear instruction to installation commanders and Garrison Commanders not to perform inspections of homes for the health and safety of those Service Members. That has since been reversed. But to me, that i can see how commanders during that time period would have been confused about what it was they were and were not supposed to do because they were getting an instruction that told them not to perform inspections. I think thats a good point and since thats been reversed, thats good, but its not enough. It should be on their o. E. R. S that they will be evaluated on this, period. For every single one person up the chain. I want to touch on one other topic, which is the Family Members who live in this housing. Theres no safe level of lead especially for children, to be exposed to. None. Are we doing anything to track the children who have lived, the Family Members who have live d n these Housing Units and are we keeping and maintaining a database so that we may track their health over the course of their lifetime so they can then themselves receive benefits and or health care that can be over the course of their lifetime . Because we know that children cannot be exposed to any level of lead safely. So what are we doing to protect children and Family Members in general who have lived in all these Housing Units . Senator when Family Members come forward, we can track it in each of these cases. As part of the briefing for every Family Member who moves into housing that you should come forward. You should know and be able to track and have records of every single Family Member who has lived in every single one of these units in order to track them. I dont see why were putting the responsibility on a Family Members. Theyve got enough on their plates. The services should be doing this and we have those records. Certainly the contractors do. Have we done this for any of the services, a database . We are out of time. So sorry. Were capturing that information in the individual Health Record for members and their families. The challenge we have is that they go out of and they go outside of the military Health System for their health care. We e dont have the ability to do that. Im not talk iing on the heah care side. You know whos lived in every housing unit. You can go back into the housing records, not the medical records, and make a list of every Single Person. We know every person whos been at ft. Bliss, bragg, where ever. Why do we not have a list of every Single Person that has lived in these unitses . We have them. Dont put it on the Family Members and the medical side to wait until the Health Division happens. Do it on the front end so that efb can later on, some child comes up, has a problem, hey, i was at ft. Bragg, theyre in the system without them having to come forward. Im out of time. Well do that. Thank you, senator duckworth. Anything further . Any other member . Any other comment . First of all, as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, well have another housing e hee ining heay possible next year. At a minimum, we need the companies back. Maybe even some of the new ones that seem to be part of this problem. And the services so that you can let us know and we can reflect on if we ever get our ndaa passed, that the language and we are out of time so thats a, that is a serious problem, but first, i want to thank all, its a very large number of people. Went to a lot of inconvenience to be here and you have been heard and you have heard us so i apprecia appreciate very much youre being here. The record will stay open until close of business wednesday december 4th for any additional questions. Now u what id ask our witnesses, respond no later than friday, december 20th. Do i have your commitment to respond to the committees additional questions by that time . All of you nod. Yes. Yes, sir. Thats good. Appreciate it very much. And appreciate your testimony and i thank you very much. Were adjourned. The senate e committee on intellectual property holds a hearing on fraudulent trade marcs. Watch live today on cspan 3, online or listen live with the free cspan radio app. The House Judiciary Committee holds a hear iing this week wit constitutional scholars as part of the impeachment inquiry with president trump. Its intend ed to focus on the constitutional grounds for president ial impeachment. Accord tog a statement from gerald nadler. The president has been invited to attend and have his Legal Counsel ask questions. This weekend, the white house declined. The president is in london attending a nato meeting through wednesday. Well have live coverage of the impeachment hearing wednesday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Online or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Go shopping and see whats now available at the cspan online store. Including our all new campaign 2020 tshirts. Sweatshirts and hats. Go to cspanstore. Org and browse all of products. Democratic president ial candidate Kamala Harris spent time with voters at a house party in iowa. Answering questions on immigration, Border Security and criminal justice reform