OPINION: Q&A with Journal Community Council member Jim Tegnalia

Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a series introducing readers to the Journal’s new Community Council members. These are excerpts from a longer podcast interview .

Why did you want to join our Community Council?

I’ve been in Albuquerque since 1993 in several different positions, both with the (Department of Energy) and Sandia (National Laboratories). I was a vice president while at Sandia, I also ran the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s field office in Albuquerque. I’m drawn to Albuquerque. I think there’s a lot in the national security environment in Albuquerque that the population doesn’t know about. And I would very much like to help in that regard, trying to draw the community into understanding the national security activity that goes on here.

You earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1968 and then did a tour in Vietnam.

I graduated from Georgetown (University) in Washington, D.C. I was in ROTC. I was commissioned in 1964. After I got out of graduate school, while I was on active duty, I had a year assignment in Vietnam.

Were there many doctors of physics in Vietnam?

They had no idea what to do with me while I was there. But what I actually did was night vision. It was a new field, a lot of activity underway, and they wanted somebody who understood the science of night vision to bring equipment into Vietnam to see how this was going to work in a real wartime situation. And so I introduced a lot of night vision equipment to the Army forces in Vietnam, and evaluated how well it worked. And then brought that back to the (research and development) organizations and acquisition organizations in the Department of the Army.

How did your career bring you to New Mexico?

I left DARPA as the acting director and the deputy director and went to Lockheed Martin, then Martin Marietta, as a civilian scientist. I retired from Lockheed Martin and Sandia in 2010 and I’ve been retired ever since. In the process of being retired, I started my own consulting firm, and I still consult for both the Department of Energy to the Department of Energy labs, and I’m on both the Defense Science Board and the Army Science Board for the Department of Defense.

How important are the various entities on Kirtland Air Force Base to Albuquerque?

When Lockheed Martin came into Albuquerque, the political establishment ... knew nothing about what happened beyond the fence. Nuclear weapons was a pretty secretive activity, still is. Everybody liked the economic boost that Sandia provided to the community, but they really didn’t know what they did. So Lockheed Martin had a goal in getting Sandia more involved with the local community and and the local community more involved and have an understanding (of Sandia). We tried hard to get as much of the subcontracted work that the laboratory did into Albuquerque, rather than going outside of the state to bring in subcontracted activity. Sandia still has a pretty active contracting/subcontracting base in the city.

The Kirtland Partnership Committee helped establish an industrial park outside of the Sandia gates. Contractors are now located in that industrial park close to the base, and so that helped economic development. Opening up the base and opening up things like the industrial park have drawn people to the area, and increased the economic impact of the national security team inside of Albuquerque. I think that’s a story that’s not really well known in the city.

When I retired in 2010, (Sandia employees) had more degrees from the University of New Mexico than any other university, and we tried hard to establish at the university a national security program that would help educate the people for Sandia and and also Los Alamos (National Laboratory).

You’re on several national boards. Can you tell us about that work?

My work with the Defense Science Board has recently been on, what does nuclear proliferation mean to the Department of Defense? Everybody hears North Korea has nuclear weapons, and everybody’s worried about Iran having nuclear weapons, and what would happen in the Middle East. And on the Army Science Board, I’m what’s called an emeritus member. I’ve been an Army Science Board Member for more years than I can remember, and we do studies associated with Army-specific things. A simple example is we looked at what would a new generation of tanks look like.

When you look at Albuquerque, what issues are you most interested in seeing change?

There’s a lot of room to grow the industrial base in Albuquerque. That would be a boost to the educational community. It would be a boost to economic (development) here. There are some things that we would have to work on so that Albuquerque would be a more welcoming community for those companies to locate here. An obvious one is the tax situation here. I don’t know whether that’s a workable thing.

Are you talking about gross receipt taxes?

Gross receipts tax is a big tax to a corporation. And that’s one example. Housing is another example. The crime situation. The local community is working to address the crime situation, and they’re doing what they can do. I don’t see a lot of work addressing the tax situation, but I do see (people) addressing the crime situation and the homeless situation. I think health care is another example of something that’s very important to somebody who wants to relocate to Albuquerque. It’s issues like that the local community has got to address to become more attractive to the major aerospace firms to have them relocate here and and stay here as part of the community.

You’ve been on those boards during changes in presidential administrations. What’s the status of those federal boards now?

I also have gone through (several) reductions in force, that you hear being talked about these days. My first RIF was in 1972. It’s a continual way of keeping the size of the government under control. It’s not like this is the first time that that’s ever happened. So let’s stay tuned and see how all this comes out. It’s not bad to have an independent review of your programs and the number of people you have to see if you are efficient and doing what your mission says it should be doing. So I’m more sanguine about what’s going on right now.