Operating under a stopgap spending bill instead of a full-year budget is now “the norm,” DOD Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation Director Patrick O’Brien said Tuesday at ADC’s Installation Innovation Forum in San Antonio. Congress has not yet agreed to a fiscal year 2025 budget, and the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution until late December.
“That complicates life for you,” O’Brien told defense community leaders. “It complicates life for your installations. It complicates life for us to execute things on your behalf.”
DCIP Funding
O’Brien predicted appropriators will ultimately provide about $100 million in this fiscal year for the Defense Community Infrastructure Program, the same amount provided in the previous year. The funding level means a lot of quality DCIP proposals are turned down.
“In fact, some projects that were not selected for funding leave one scratching their heads,” he said. “Generally speaking, it’s between $800 million and $1 billion in requirements that we’re seeing over year to year,” making the program highly competitive.
O’Brien encouraged defense community leaders to begin working on DCIP proposals now, because delayed appropriations will give OLDCC a short window for completing the fiscal year 2025 process.
OLDCC plans a series of virtual listening sessions over the next two months to discuss the DCIP proposal process, he said.
Broadening ‘Installation Resilience’
The term “installation resilience” is often considered to be a reference to climate resilience, O’Brien said, noting that climate change is just one of the threats DOD recognizes as installation resilience challenges.
He said his office is looking at an expanded definition of “installation resilience” that moves past-climate related threats “so that we can actually address the full continuum of threats that an installation has,” including cyber threats.
The Power of Partnership
O’Brien noted that there have been many discussions during the Installation Innovation Forum regarding military-community partnerships.
“Most of the vulnerabilities that exist for an installation can only be addressed if states and communities step up and start doing things and moving resources to create enhancements that start outside the fence and run to the fence line,” he said. “We don’t think a fence should prevent or discount or in any way inhibit the ability for a community to sit down with their local installation.”
ADC photo
