NEWS VOICES
Welcome to News Voices, a weekly feature where members of the WVIA News team will talk with each other — and sometimes sources — about key things we've learned in recent stories we have been working on.
Today, Roger DuPuis sits down with Kat Bolus to discuss her recent visit to Tobyhanna Army Depot for a story about what the facility does and how efficiency has been key to its success.
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ROGER: I'm Roger DuPuis, and this is News Voices, and today I am here with WVIA News reporter Kat Bolus, who recently toured the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Monroe County. Hello, Kat!
KAT: Hi, Roger.
ROGER: Hi. Glad to have you here. You are a Scranton native, and had you ever been inside the depot before?
KAT: That was my first time inside the Army Depot. I knew about it. I know people who work there, but I had never actually been on the grounds.
ROGER: And what did you think?
KAT: I was kind of just surprised by like, the sheer like, size of it. I think when you grow up, you know that they repair things there, but you don't really know what they repair there. So that was kind of, you know, an interesting look into to the work that actually goes on there, or, as they call it, their missions.
ROGER: Right. I'm going to come back to that mission in a little bit. But the reason you were out there is because they really wanted to talk to you about government efficiency. And one of the things I know that the folks at the depot wanted to communicate to you is that they operate very much like a business.
KAT: One of the things that Danielle Weinschenk — she's the public relations coordinator for the depot — said to me was they have to be efficient. They have to attract customers. And they attract customers by, you know, keeping their prices low by being able to be a one-stop shop for multiple items. Navy missiles is a mission that they're working on. They're cleaning up the Navy missiles. They're repainting them. They're, you know, working on the electronics inside of them. They're getting them back so that they can be put back on the ships and be fully operational — you know, all the way in northeastern Pennsylvania, not near an ocean.
ROGER: Right, right. And I want to come back to something you said. You referred to their customers, and their customers are really a diverse group of organizations, right?
KAT: So they serve basically the entire Department of Defense. It's all the branches of the United States military. But they also serve other departments within the federal government, and they also serve our allies too. So they're working on equipment and different items for different countries and different militaries, you know that the United States allies with across the world. And employees don't just work in Monroe County, they work across the world and across the country.
ROGER: So really, you know, a lot of folks think of it as the Army Depot, but it's so much more than that.
KAT: Yeah, I mean, they they work with border security, like I said, they work with other departments within the federal government. There's certain things that they make there, but for the most part, they're focusing on repairing, you know, technology, basically, and getting it back out to the warfighter. That's a, that's a phrase they use a lot.
ROGER: OK. And you know, one of the reasons that this story came up now is because the Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE, as it's called — is looking at how all government agencies are spending their money and how efficiently they're operating. And it sounds like the folks at Tobyhanna, including their union, were concerned about that.
KAT: So the union was worried, you know, they they wouldn't be able to do their work if those probationary employees — those employees with, you know, less than a year's worth of time served — were laid off. So Ned George, he's president of AFGE, the local government employees union, and he reached out to all of our federally elected officials, Senators McCormick and Fetterman and U.S. Representative Rob Bresnahan. And Rob Bresnahan actually toured the depot the same week that I was there, and kind of reassured his commitment to making sure that it's a facility that stays local, because it really does employ thousands of local people.
ROGER: Twelve-hundred acres and about 3,000 employees, if I remember from your story, yeah, part of what they call the country's organic industrial base: 23 facilities across the country make up that base, including the Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, and, of course, the depot in Tobyhanna.
KAT: Yeah. So, you know, we have kind of a rich military history within this region, not just with people serving, but, you know, civilians even working to kind of support our troops and support our warfighters.
ROGER: And Kat, I know you have been keeping in touch with the federal employees' unions to learn about what's happening to them and what their thoughts are as we go through this period of potential cuts.
KAT: Yes.
ROGER: Okay, we'll look forward to hearing more from you.
KAT: Thanks, Roger.
ROGER: Thanks, Kat.
READ MORE ABOUT TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT AND ITS MISSION: 'Nothing that we wouldn't do for American heroes': Leaders say Tobyhanna Army Depot lives and breathes government efficiency.
