Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. You are absolutely right. That is the process that we go through in reporting the material.

Mr. COTTER. On your followup on this, let us assume that this material lays here for several months after you declare it surplus or after you put it in your form 120, do you get any intelligence on that to indicate that it has cleared screening or that it is bogged down in the General Services Administration, or does that type of property get that type of screening?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. We are not as refined in our followup on the forms 120 as we hope to be.

I will answer that question by giving you two types of followups, and to do it I will refer to these charts, if I may. I was going to answer that later if I might.

Mr. COTTER. No, no, you go ahead.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. I would like to discuss the status of our excess and surplus property, and to do that, if I may, I would like to refer to these three charts on the board behind me.

I want to mention, before I get into that, that these charts are used by the commanding general and his staff as a mechanical control device. That, by no means, answers any questions that the commanding general and his staff may want to ask. However, we feel that they do give you a thoroughly good pictorial evaluation.

These charts are broken down into TSEP, surplus property and salvage activity. We do that for our own convenience and control purposes.

Some of that salvage is surplus, and some of it is scrap.

We can control the man's workload and the man's personnel staff by breaking it down.

Mr. BALWAN. It might be desirable if at this point we would request that these charts be duplicated and inserted in the record at some future time, so that the record will have some meaning in reference to them.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. I think that is a very good idea if we can get them photostated and sent in to us.

General MARSHALL. We will do that, sir.

(Charts referred to are herewith inserted.)

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. To begin with, this chart covers technical service excess property.

We see, by referring to this graph here, that we have on hand some 11,837 short tons of technical service excess property at the end of September. The greater portion is in the Storage Division, and a small portion is in the Maintenance Division.

We see, further, that it looks like we had a good month of shipping in September, because it has gone down considerably from August, as a matter of fact, some 9,000 tons. However, that is not entirely true, and I would like to explain that to you at this time.

At the time we started devising these charts as a management control device, due to the expediency of the situation, we estimated tonnage on hand until we could get a chance to go through the documents to find out what the actual tonnage was.

In the month of September we finished that job, and found out what the tonnage was by going through every document, and we had to make an adjustment in our estimate (which was based on standard factors

for making estimations as compared to the actual) to the tune of 8,000 tons. Our shipments this month exceeded our receipts by 1,000 tons.

On the right we see that that 11,000 tons of property required some 350,000 square feet of storage space to house it. A little better than 250,000 of it is open storage, and about 100,000 of it is warehouse or closed storage.

Mr. BALWAN. Why hasn't the storage space occupied declined with the tonnage on hand?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. This 9,000 tons wouldn't affect it. It has declined somewhat. There is no direct correlation between the tonnage on hand and space occupied, as such, because of the very nature of the item. You may get an item half the size of this room that doesn't weigh anything tonnage wise, so there is no direct correlation necessarily between storage space occupied and the tonnage on hand. Only 1,000 tons is the actual decrease. This has decreased somewhat. Now the next graph on this Technical Service Excess Property chart, in the lower left-hand corner, is headed "Declarations awaiting receipt of forms 120." That is the one I talked about with reference to the local form 120's from Columbus. We group them by those that Columbus has had under 30 days, and then from 31 to 60 days and from 60 to 90 days, and over 90 days, on which we have not yet received an information copy of the form 120. That means we have given them a declaration form, but they have not processed it yet.

Mr. BALWAN. They may not even send you a form 120. They may have other disposition, such as put it back into stock or ship it someplace else.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. The only way they could do it would be for us to physically handle it. We would refer to this declaration number.

General MARSHALL. That is not only form 120, but disposition.

Mr. COTTER. This property represents property segregated into technical excesses.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes, sir. Periodically, as a matter of fact once a week, we will write to Columbus for tracer information on the documents 30 days or older to find out what happened.

Mr. COTTER. In other words, Columbus has got a pretty big backlog on your stuff here?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes; some 381 of them.

Mr. COTTER. And a big percentage appears to be over 90 days old? Lienutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALWAN. What do those numbers in the lower lefthand column represent? Is that dollar volume, or what?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. They are the number of documents. Mr. BALWAN. So that you are awaiting form 120's on 381 documents?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. That is right.

Mr. BALWAN. That has no relation to dollars or tons?
Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. That is right.

Now, going over to the right-hand side of this first chart, we have charted the forms 120 awaiting clearance on disposition instructions. In other words, separate and distinct from this, the declaration has developed. Columbus has prepared the form 120, and sent it to the office of the Quartermaster General, and sent us an information сору, and we have not received any disposition instructions on them. Again

we group them by length of time that they are in process. We have picked out of this big graph this little corner to indicate that these forms 120 were initiated by the Depot Maintenance Division as compared to Columbus General Depot. The reason it is picked out for this month only is that they started this procedure in the month of September.

What I have said, to summarize this thing, is that we have this amount of tons on hand in the Technical Service excess property category. It takes this much space to house it and, paperwise, it is documented by either a declaration or a form 120, and they are grouped according to age, and we have tracer acknowledgement on them.

Mr. BALWAN. Can you summarize at all from your paperwork as to how long a time it takes from the time you get orders to inventory or to confirm your inventory to the time that you have disposition?

In other words, is the paperwork on all this thing taking 18 months before we actually get something out of the system after Columbus makes an initial inquiry?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. We cannot answer that from this chart. Mr. BALWAN. Do you people know how long it takes?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes, sir. What is the average length of time that it takes Columbus, Major MacDonald?

Major MACDONALD. I would say 18 months is a good figure. However, it is rapidly decreasing now. Averaging it out over a period of a year, it is very difficult to say that.

Mr. COTTER. Theoretically, you can put this stack of form 120's of September on top of this stack of declarations, and you are getting about the time it takes to go through there.

Mr. BALWAN. It might take 2 years.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. That is right.

Mr. BALWAN. I am talking about the total time until you finally get the release stamped on the form 120. And then you have got time after that, because the disposal officer has to lot it, hold it the required time, and catalog it.

Let us say we have $1 billion worth of excess in the system. It is conceivable that the $1 billion in paperwork may take us 3 years to get out of our hair.

Mr. COTTER. You don't know on the form 120's where the trouble is. Here it looks as if the trouble is in Columbus.

General MARSHALL. Yes, and there has been action taken by us and by the Quartermaster General's Office to speed up the Columbus disposition, and they have improved considerably.

Mr. BALWAN. Columbus might say, for instance, that the General Services Administration had no time limit on this.

General MARSHALL. Yes, sir; and they have more than one depot. They have the Chicago depot, too, as well as this one.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. I think it might be well to pin this down, if possible. This is quite an illuminating discussion. It is beginning to look at this moment as if it will be years and years before we will be able to dispose of this excess property unless we can speed up the process and cut out some of the paperwork and redtape.

Mr. BALWAN. Rather than following up Columbus, we will hit a general depot of the Columbus type, and we can get that general information.

Mr. MORRIS. I wonder if you might say something as to a distinction with respect to the extent of screening between excess material from your Storage Division and the uneconomically repairable material from the Maintenance Division. Is there any difference in that?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. The screening is not determined by whether it is economically repairable or not, but by the type of property, which you gentlemen are even more familiar with than I am. I am talking about the P and Q property.

Mr. MORRIS. I am assuming that these are line items in excess of $300. Is there any distinction as to the extent of screening?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. No.

Mr. BALWAN. Is not the decision on nonreportable property and Q property a function not only of the dollar value, but also of the condition?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes.

Mr. BALWAN. So it does make a difference on screening?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. The screening has nothing to do with whether it was not economically repairable, but the P and Q type classification does make a difference.

Mr. COTTER. Doesn't the same man who determines the economic repairability also grade it into P and Q and condition?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. COTTER. Wouldn't he also have the authority to condemn it or say this is scrap, even though it is over $300, and after only a local screening the material would go directly into your surplus?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. That is right. As a matter of fact, any property, the repair cost of which will exceed 65 percent of its replacement value, is automatically disposed of through disposal channels.

Mr. BALWAN. What gets into that? Is it R-3 and R-4 condition, regardless of value? Does that get into that?

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. The R-3 and R-4 is a description of the condition of the item.

Mr. BALWAN. Yes.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. But it is predicated on the cost of repair. If the cost of repair exceeds 55 percent of the replacement value, regardless of what it is, it goes into technical service excess property. This is overall, any item.

Mr. MORRIS. So that there actually is no screening in the usual sense for this uneconomicaly repairable material. As far as screening is concerned, uneconomically repairable material is regarded as scrap or salvage material, and you have local authority to dispose of it.

Lieutenant Colonel LEEPER. Yes, sir; that is the meaning of the term "uneconomically repairable," in a general sense.

I gave you an example of office furniture or office equipment, and I said if the estimated repair cost exceeded 55 percent of the replacement value that would be reported as technical service excess property. Let us take that same item and assume that the cost of repair of the item exceeded 65 percent of its replacement value, that would immediately go through property-disposal channels.

General MARSHALL. I found in going through spare parts on this $100 and $30 limitation, that in certain items there were spare parts that would be valued under $100 which we could dispose of, and there