GDG- Latschar Interview Part 2

[Les Fowler]

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 08:02:46 -0800 (PST)
From: keith toney <historypiper at yahoo.com>
Subject: GDG- RE: Latschar interview
To: gettysburg at arthes.com
Message-ID: <90177.42205.qm at web62415.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
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Does anyone have access to a link for the second part
of the interview? I'd love to read it if possible.
Thanks!
Regards,
Keith


Keith,
I haven't been able to find a link, but here is the text of the 2nd part 
of Dr. Latschar's interview. It's really quite informative. Good reading.
Regards,
Les
**

*
*

* EDITOR’S NOTE: */This is the second in a two-part series outlining the 
views of Gettysburg National Military Park Superintendent Dr. John 
A.Latschar, expressed during a three-hour interview this week./

*BY SCOT ANDREW PITZER*

/Times Staff Writer/

*/What happens now with the GAO investigation?/*

*Latschar: *“I can tell you for sure, because GAO told me, that there 
will not be a separate report on Gettysburg. That rumor has been out 
there, and from what I know, it’s not true. Gettysburg is part of a 
larger nationwide study. The Congressional committee wants that study to 
be released by August, which fits the Congressional calendar for passage 
of bills. The GAO also told me that they want to visit up to a 
half-dozen other parks that are in some sort of stage of forming or 
implementing partnerships. As far as everything that I’m aware of, we’re 
part of a larger study that’s intended to be genuine. The next thing I 
anticipate from the GAO, if they follow their schedule to publish in 
August, is that sometime in July we’ll get a copy of their draft and be 
able to comment on it. I don’t expect to hear much more from them.”

*/There are a lot of street rumors./*

*Latschar: *“The GAO is not going to recommend that I be relieved of my 
duties. Number one, they don’t do that, because it’s outside of what 
they’ve been chartered to do by Congress. We’re not terribly surprised 
to know that there’s rumors out there that I’m going to lose my job as a 
result of the GAO coming to town, or that there’s an (Inspector General) 
investigation. It’s not surprising to know that some of the names 
attached to those rumors are the same ones who have been attacking us 
since the 1990s when the new visitor center was first an issue.”

*/Is the Inspector General investigating the park?/*

*Latschar: *“There is no Inspector General investigation. I’ve been 
hearing that for three weeks. What else have I been hearing through the 
grapevine? I was informed Sunday that I’m going to be arrested this week.”

*/You’ve been a lightning rod for personal attacks./*

*Latschar: *“The third stage of debate is when opponents hope they can 
attach stigma to the person responsible for the decision, and maybe the 
decision, itself, will go away. All I can say for certain is that with 
every single decision we’ve made here at Gettysburg — from one-way roads 
to management of white-tail deer, to the new visitor center and museum — 
inevitably, some of those folks opposed to the decisions have descended 
to the point of attacking me personally, in the hopes that they can 
besmirch my name and attach stigma. The battlefield guides are an 
example. We have a reservation system, and we’ve been through the 
process of getting to that system, so now they’re down to the personal 
level. They’re now attacking me by attacking my wife. It’s regrettable, 
but it comes with the territory.”

*/What is the park’s relationship with the Association of Licensed 
Battlefield Guides?/*

*Latschar: *“In the past, we have had a very collegial relationship with 
the Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides. We view the Association 
as a shortcut to make it easier for us so we don’t have to ask 150 
different guides what they think about something... we can just ask the 
group. But that relationship started to deteriorate under the current 
president (Rick Hohmann). There’s a lot of rhetoric being spilled. There 
has been less and less negotiation, and more and more screaming and 
yelling on their side. Some of their concerns, in general, are very 
realistic because they are about change. It’s just as realistic as the 
merchants on Steinwehr Avenue when they first figured out, in the 1990s, 
that we wanted to move a half-mile away. The guides are going through 
basically the same scenario, because their concern is about change with 
the new system. They’ve been doing things one way for a long time.”

*/The Association has referenced your wife — Terry, who is a Licensed 
Guide — as being a problem. Was she attending Association meetings, 
taking notes, and then sharing them with you?/*

*Latschar: *“I don’t think there’s any issue. When Terry resigned as a 
ranger and went back to guiding, which was last May... she paid her 
dues, and started going to meetings. She didn’t think anything of it, 
and I didn’t either. One of the reasons that I didn’t think anything of 
it was that I have never not known everything that has happened at an 
Association meeting, because the Association has never tried to hide 
their business from the park. If we weren’t informed formally by the 
Association’s executive council itself, we were told informally by 
guides who had gone to the meetings. After she attended her first 
meeting, I got a letter from Rick (Hohmann), who wrote that he 
considered it a conflict of interest for my wife to be going to his 
meetings, and that I should forbid her from doing so. One of my chief 
rangers asked him: ‘Are you sure you want to give the superintendent 
authority to say which guides can come to Association meetings and which 
guides cannot?’ I have no more moral, legal, or ethical power to say my 
wife can’t go to an Association meeting, if she’s paid her dues and 
joined the Association, than say she can’t go to a Red Cross meeting.”

*/Explain the role that Robert Kinsley has in the visitor center and 
museum project. He’s the developer?/*

*Latschar: *“He’s the chairman of the Board of Directors for the 
Gettysburg Foundation. And like any state chartered 501c3, all decisions 
are made by the Board of Directors, which I think has 23 people at last 
count.”

*/How did you originally cross paths with Mr. Kinsley?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“Way back in 1996, the Park Service released an RFP, 
which is a request for proposal, for our partner or partners to help us 
do our project. That’s where we first met Mr. Kinsley, because he 
submitted one of the responses. When Mr. Kinsley’s proposal was accepted 
by the Park Service as a proposal to negotiate, we told him that in 
order to carry this out, you’re going to have to create a non-profit 
foundation, which he had done by 1998, I believe. That’s the Gettysburg 
Foundation. The Foundation’s board is a fundraising board, and as 
chairman of the board, Mr. Kinsley personally supervises the project, 
and is the boss of Bob Wilburn, who is the president of the Foundation. 
All the way through this project, when we’re hiring architects or 
whatever, the architects were hired by the Foundation and its Board.”

*/ Is there a conflict of interest with Mr. Kinsley serving as the Board 
Chairman and his company working at the Baltimore Pike visitor center 
site?/*

* Latschar: *“Mr. Kinsley never had any say, if you will, in hiring the 
architects. He always has, through the board of directors, had oversight 
into anything that’s going on. And as a leading contributor to the 
project, we’re very, very sensitive to his desires, like we are to all 
of our other major contributors. He’s given $8 million in cash toward 
this project.”

*/What is the involvement of York-based Kinsley Construction with the 
visitor center project?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“When it came time to go to construction, Mr. Kinsley 
came to the Board of Directors with a proposal… to use Kinsley 
Construction as a construction management firm for the project. A 
construction management firm doesn’t own a hammer, or a saw. A 
construction management firm takes the architectural drawings, and they 
review them from a constructability point of view, correct any mistakes, 
and put them out for bid. Then, they receive and review the bids, and 
then recommend back to the Foundation who the best bid is. They never 
touch any dirt. In a project like this, there is no one bid. We’ve had 
about 43 bids for sub-contracting over the course of the project.”

*/How much is Kinsley Construction being paid by the Gettysburg 
Foundation?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“Construction management services for a project like this 
were estimated to be worth $2.5 million to $4.5 million. The value of 
that, if you were to go out on the street to hire a construction 
management firm to manage a project for you… well, that’s the price 
range you could expect to pay for those services. Mr. Kinsley offered 
those services to the Foundation for at-cost: which means without 
profit, and without overpaying, thereby saving the Foundation something 
like $2 million over the course of construction. There is no profit.”

*/
Why is he doing the project at cost and not for a profit?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“Two things: number one is having his heart in the right 
place. He’s already given over $8 million in cash and this is just 
another way he could serve. Number two: Mr. Kinsley just happens to 
believe, and having seen his folks at work… I agree with him… that he 
has the best construction management folks in this part of the country.”

*/Critics have suggested that secrecy was a factor when the Board hired 
Kinsley Construction./*

*/ /Latschar: *“The Board of Directors did all of the ethical stuff. 
They recused Mr. Kinsley, and Mrs. Kinsley, because she’s on the board. 
They also recused the secretary and the treasurer, because they’re 
Kinsley employees. They were out of the room while the rest of the board 
discussed this. They also had an attorney look into it, and we’ve got 
all the paperwork. An outside auditing firm was brought in just 
specifically to audit the cost charged against construction management. 
So again, everyone can see the audit report and say, yes indeed Mr. 
Kinsley didn’t make any profit. I went down to Washington and had a 
solicitor’s opinion saying that with those safeguards in place, there 
was no conflict of interests, and the Park Service approved.”

*/ Is there a limit on how muchmoney the GettysburgFoundation can borrow 
for your project?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“There is a contractual limit of $20 million that can be 
borrowed, but right now, they’re only planning to borrow $15 million… 
and they’re tax-free bonds. They’re allowed to pay them off over 20 
years. We’re close enough to the end with this project where I can tell 
you that they’re only going to borrow $15 million.”

*/Why borrow money? Can’t the Gettysburg Foundation raise all of the 
funds?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“It could be raised, but it would take longer. You borrow 
to get the money now. There is a certain percentage that you set aside, 
that’s appropriate to borrow, that can be paid back in a reasonable time 
through anticipated revenues. When we signed the agreement in the year 
2000, we said that they could borrow a certain amount. There’s never 
been a shortfall.”

*/How will the GettysburgFoundation pay off the $15 million in debt?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“They’ll pay it off in several major ways. Number one is 
through the admission fees to the theater and Cyclorama building, which 
are very similar to our old Electric Map and Cyclorama charges. The 
Foundation also has a contractor, Event Network, who’s going to operate 
the book store. That will be operated on a commission basis… not rent… 
so that the Foundation gets a certain percentage of the gross proceeds 
of the book store. It’s an escalating percentage — the more they sell, 
the more the Foundation gets. They have a contractor to provide food 
service, Aramark, and again, they’ll get an escalating commission rate 
on the gross sales in the food service area from that contractor. Those 
are the three or four main ones: the theater, the Cyclorama, the book 
store and the food service.”

*/ What are the projected revenues at your new facility?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“We’re talking about them collecting... around $7.5 to $8 
million a year. We’ve been doing $4.5 million a year just from our book 
store, the Electric Map and Cyclorama program, so it’s not out of reach.”

*/Do you or Mr. Kinsley get a cut?/*

*/ /Latschar: *“If there’s anything left over at the beginning of the 
year, then the Park Service and the Foundation decide how to spend it. 
It could go toward paying down the debt faster, or it could go to new 
furniture or equipment, or just be donated back the park. The point is, 
none of that money leaves the site, because the Foundation is a state 
chartered 501c3 with the sole purpose of supporting the park. If 
revenues are higher than anticipated, no one on the Board of Directors 
gets a bonus, because all of them serve without pay. I know that some of 
the continual critics out there are still convinced that either me or 
Mr. Kinsley are going to ride off into the sunset with saddle bags full 
of money, and that just isn’t true. It’s just not going to happen.”

*/What is your arrangement with Eastern National? Are they still working 
at the park?/*

*Latschar: *“There were two contracts. The contract with Eastern to 
operate the (new) book store, that’s the one they lost to Event Network. 
But obviously, Eastern is going to operate this book store until the day 
we close and move, and Event Network takes over the new one. The second 
contract was to operate our ticketing and reservation system, the 
Electric Map, and for some custodial services, and that’s the one that 
was violated in October 2006.”

*/Why was Eastern’s contract terminated in 2006 and what were the 
specific violations? /*

*/ /Latschar: *“It was a contract...for reservation services... that was 
terminated amongst a certain amount of turmoil... and the Gettysburg 
Foundation took over those duties. That contract had certain provisions 
and Eastern violated about a half-dozen of those provisions. On a Friday 
night after all of the Park Service people had left work, Eastern took 
their entire advanced reservation staff out of this building and moved 
them out to Gateway Gettysburg without telling the park. One of the 
provisions of our contract is that Eastern is prohibited from doing 
business with any commercial enterprises without the Park Service’s 
approval. Eastern did not inform us. They moved after we closed and went 
home, after five o’clock on a Friday night. Another provision they 
violated was that Eastern was to sell tickets only for Gettysburg 
National Military Park, and only GNMP. In other words, they weren’t 
authorized to do reservations for anybody else, or under any other name.”

*/There are rumors, in town, about Visitor Center book store thefts and 
proprietary information being stolen on computer./*

*Latschar: *“Years ago, there were two or three individuals who were 
successfully prosecuted for theft from the book store while they were 
book store employees and one of them was a nephew of mine.”

*/Successfully prosecuted?/*

* Latschar: *“Yes, by the Park Service Police. You didn’t hear that 
part, huh? In the 13 years that I’ve been here, there have probably been 
six employees of Eastern National who have been successfully prosecuted 
for theft. That’s not all that bad of an average for this kind of an 
operation. But this is in the rumor mill, because it’s an attempt to get 
at me. My nephew Dave, who is actually Terry’s nephew, worked at the 
book store, and this is back in 2001-02 so he might have been a minor at 
the time. He, and two of his colleagues if I remember correctly, were 
caught with their hand in their tail*. They were skimming, and caught on 
video. Eastern saw it. They were all prosecuted and they all pleaded 
guilty and they all paid their fines... and they don’t work here 
anymore. They paid their restitution to Eastern for the estimated 
amount, and they all paid fines. All of that is in our law enforcement 
records... and it was well before the time that Eastern violated its 
contract, so they’re not related.”

*/Were you involved in the prosecution?/*

*Latschar: *“It had nothing to do with me. As soon as a crime is 
committed here, it goes straight into the law enforcement channels, 
which I cannot interfere with. It went straight from our law enforcement 
people to our district attorney in Harrisburg.”