Feb 17, 2006  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

It cost the federal government just under $364 million to discharge and replace about 9,500 gay service members during the first decade of the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, according to a report released this week by a panel of military experts assembled by the University of California. The figure is 91 percent more than previously estimated.

The 12-member Blue Ribbon Commission that conducted the study released a report Feb. 14 saying it was unable to obtain certain information from the Pentagon that likely would have indicated still higher costs.

"[O]ur strong sense is that our final estimate is too low and that the net result is that we have under-reported the total cost of implementing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" the report says.

Among commission members who wrote the report were William Perry, defense secretary during the Clinton administration and Lawrence Korb, assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration. Others serving on the commission included a retired Army colonel, a retired admiral and two professors at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, released its own report in February 2005 on the cost of discharging gays under the policy. That GAO report concluded that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy cost a minimum of $190.5 million for the 10-year period from fiscal year 1994 through fiscal year 2003.

Similar to the University of California report, the GAO report said its authors were unable to obtain information from the Defense Department needed to provide a full accounting of the cost for discharging gay service members and training new people to replace them.

"Oversights in GAO's methodology led to both under and overestimations of the financial costs of implementing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" the UC report says. "By correcting these oversights, and after careful analysis of available data, this commission finds that the total cost of implementing Don't Ask, Don't Tell' between fiscal year 1994 and fiscal year 2003 was at least $363.8 million, which is $73.3 million, or 91 percent, more than originally reported by GAO.

"Given that we were not able to include several cost categories in our estimate and that we used conservative assumptions to guide our research," the report says, "our estimate of the cost of implementing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' should be seen as a lower bound estimate."

President Clinton proposed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in 1993 after it became clear that Congress was poised to overturn his earlier plan to allow gays to serve openly in the military.

Congress modified the Clinton proposal and enacted it into law as part of a military authorization bill. It went into effect in 1994.

The policy allows gays to serve in the military as long as they do not disclose their sexual orientation or engage in "homosexual conduct." Clinton argued that the policy was an improvement over the previous policy that banned gays from serving under all circumstances.

But gay activists and a growing number of gay-supportive members of Congress say the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy remains highly discriminatory. More than 100 members of the House have co-sponsored legislation introduced by Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) to repeal the policy and allow gays to serve openly.

Both Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, have since called for the policy's repeal, as did John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president in 2004.

Flaw in the system?
According to the UC report, the GAO study was flawed because it focused mostly on the estimated cost for replacing ousted gay service members. The UC report says it based its cost estimates on several criteria, including the cost to the military of the "lost value" of the expected full term of each service member discharged prematurely.

If a gay service member was discharged shortly before he or she completed their term, the cost to the military would be minimal, the report says. But if the service member were discharged shortly after he or she completed basic and advanced training, the cost would be far higher.

The report estimates that "skills training" for most enlisted members who are not officers ranges between $15,000 and $30,000 depending on whether they receive "mid-career" training. The average estimated cost to recruit and train officers, the report says, comes to about $174,000. In the case of a single, highly trained officer, such as a jet fighter pilot, the training cost could be as high as $1.4 million.

Other costs come into play, the report says, ...