THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 10, 1995 TAG: 9506100259
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
A major arm of the Coast Guard is leaving 12 coastal states and heading for an inland office in Martinsburg, W. Va., where it will keep track of the nation's fleet of 200,000 documented ships and boats.
Moving the work to a mountain town, 200 miles from the closest ocean, has drawn objections from Seattle to Long Beach and from New Orleans to Norfolk. The focus of the criticism is a man who makes no secret of his efforts to direct federal funds to his home state - U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
Documenting a vessel has been compared to closing on the purchase or sale of a home. As with homes, title searches are involved, along with lawyers, bankers and ship or yacht dealers.
Boat owners must renew their documentation annually.
At one time, each boat required 17 pages of documentation. That was reduced to seven in 1983 and to two today.
Trish Williams, president of Marine Documentation Services, a private firm in Hampton, is concerned that the move will slow processing of documentations to a crawl. She handles between 700 and 800 vessel documentations a year.
``I recall the last time they consolidated in 1983 and it resulted in a year and a half backlog in places like Miami and Boston,'' she said.
The move, expected in July, will end 28 years of Coast Guard documentation work in 14 of the nation's largest ports.
The consolidation will cost $3.1 million and save an estimated $1.6 million a year, in part by eliminating 22 jobs nationwide, Coast Guard officials said.
``We'll pay for the cost of the move in under 2 1/2 years,'' said Thomas Willis of Reston, chief of vessel documentation and tonnage for the Coast Guard. ``I think we are going to give better service in the future.''
The new office, with 104 personnel, will be highly automated, saving paperwork and time, Willis said.
Maritime interests are skeptical.
When the move was announced last fall, industry leaders in Seattle objected to closing their regional office, saying the move would create a particular hardship for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
There were complaints in New Orleans about delays in handling documents used for vessel sales and loan closings.
From coast to coast, cries of ``pork barrel politics'' have been raised about Martinsburg as the Coast Guard's port of choice.
Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee until the GOP took control of Congress this year, has steered $1.5 billion in federal money to his home state in the last five years.
Most of the money was for new roads but he also has taken home some major federal offices: the new FBI Identification Center, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt, an IRS processing center, a Fish and Wildlife training center, a branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the new Coast Guard center.
He has even snagged a piece of the Navy for the Mountain State: Four new C-130 Hercules transport planes are being sent to Martinsburg under a $25 million project that will upgrade thetown's regional airport.
``When you talk to people and they hear we're moving to West Virginia, they say, `It must be Senator Byrd's doing,' '' said Helen B. Calvert, who will retire when her job as assistant chief at the Norfolk documentation department is eliminated.
All 13 jobs at the Norfolk center are being eliminated. Some employees are planned to take jobs at the Martinsburg office and some are seeking other government jobs here.
Much of the staff in Martinsburg will be new employees, Calvert said.
The Norfolk office is one of the Coast Guard's largest for documentation, with files on 24,000 vessels - from a 25-foot pleasure boat to an 800-foot collier.
``It does put a cramp on people wanting to go down and close immediately,'' said Donna Harmon, owner of Hampton Roads Documentation Service in Portsmouth.
The private licensing service will have to depend on the mail or overnight parcel deliveries to make certain its clients are served quickly.
``Otherwise, it's going to be a four- to five-hour ride'' to Martinsburg, she said. The town is 70 miles northwest of Washington.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Mike Rosecrans, executive officer of the Marine Safety Office in Norfolk, believes the consolidation will be beneficial in the future.
Electronic mail and faxes help speed the documentation process, said Rosecrans, whose office now oversees the documentation work in Norfolk.
``The public won't see any diminished service - possibly an increase in service,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has steered $1.5 billion in federal money
to his home state in the past five years.
COAST GUARD MOVES INLAND
Staff
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
SOURCE: U.S. COAST GUARD
by CNB