Elmendorf and Fort Richardson are blending together as one to become the 673rd Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, also known as JBER, in January 2010.

The JBER transition team is sifting through a mountain of data to combine and consolidate each installation’s support services - everything from plowing snow to managing civilian employees - into one operation said Col. Jeffery Vinger, provisional commander of Joint Base Wing, the department that is overseeing the merger.

Elmendorf and Fort Richardson sit next to each other, but right now both are maintained separately. Several services overlap, such as maintenance and construction, and a few services are already combined, such as the hospital, library, theater and shopping areas.

In 2005 Congress approved a recommendation from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that several military bases be required to join together. This mandated that the 28 bases merge into 12 joint bases and be initially operational by Jan. 31, 2010. Joint bases need to become fully operational by Oct. 1, 2010.

As a result, the U.S. Pacific Air Force, which Elmendorf falls under, will no longer control Hickman Air Force Base in Hawaii or Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. Those bases will be combined with nearby Navy bases and will be managed by the Navy. The Pacific Air Force picked up Fort Richardson in the reorganization.

Although the management of the bases in changing, the missions of each service branch will not, Vinger said.

“We’re not going to be touching the mission side of the house,” Vinger said. “That’s going to be the Air Force for flying and predominantly Army for deploying.”

The command of JBER will fall under an Air Force colonel, who will be named July 2010, and an Army colonel will serve as deputy commander.

Currently, each local base has about 6,000 airmen and soldiers, plus their families. Once it’s all combined, the commander will oversee and support more than 35,000 people, roughly the same population as Eagle River, in an area that covers 85,000 acres.

Vinger said one good thing to come out of this merger is an upcoming $20 million budget increase for the joint base from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

In the last few years each branch has been funded at a 65 percent level; that will go up to a 90 percent level with the new base.

In easy terms, if the Air Force asks for $100 for its budget, it gets $65. When joint basing takes effect, it will get $90 of the $100 budget request.

The end result: the Air Force JBER commander will manage a combined budget of about $612 million.

“It’s a huge increase and windfall for us,” Vinger said.

In general, each service branch will manage their own military personnel, but there will be dozens of blended departments where soldiers might serve under Air Force staff, and vice versa, such as in the areas of road maintenance and law enforcement.

Some departments will be combined to eliminate a duplication of services. For example, instead of paying several home-building contractors different rates on either installation, JBER will consolidate contracts as a way to save money, Vinger said.

The most noticeable change will be with the 722 civilian employees on post who work for the Department of the Army. All of those positions will shift to the Department of Air Force. Their jobs will stay the same. The bosses and building names might change, but the services they provide will remain, Vinger said.

Also, as a result of the joint base, 360 new civilian jobs will be created.

“We’re not expecting any negative economic impact on the community,” Vinger said.

The Air Force and Army have signed a memorandum of understanding between each other and developed a construct for how the joint operation will work. Vinger said they are waiting for everything to be approved at the national level before moving forward and combining more services.

Vinger’s team has been working with other joint installations such as Langley Air Force Base and Fort Eustis in Virginia to learn more about the joint process.

“The intent is to determine how those organizations are making this happen and what kind of best practices they are using and is there anything we can mine out of that and turn that into a JBER specific type practice,” Vinger said.

The Air Force and Army have been researching the merger for three years and began really digging in six months ago with a plan of action.

“We want the transition to be transparent to all of our customers. If we do this right, nobody’s going to know that it even happened,” Vinger said. “We’re looking at how best to provide the service to the customer - the soldier, the airman or their families.”

Reach the reporter at jill.fankhauser@alakastar.com.

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, June 25, 2009.