Roughly two-thirds of the new Tri-City jobs created by Fluor Daniel don't compare well with the lost Hanford jobs they were supposed to replace in fiscal 1997, according to a federal report.

Only 61 of the 201 new jobs credited to Fluor in fiscal 1997 paid close to the salaries of the lost Hanford jobs, concluded a November audit report by the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General.

"(DOE's Richland office) and Fluor Daniel are at risk of not meeting (contractual) goals of stabilizing and diversifying the economy of the Tri-Cities because most of the new jobs created during (fiscal) 1997 were not comparable to Hanford jobs and, thus, may not sustain long-term economic goals," stated the DOE inspector general report.

The majority of the new jobs were not high-skill, high-paying, long term, or non-Hanford related, the report stated.

Hanford and Tri-City Industrial Development Council officials disagreed with the report, saying Fluor's contract does not mandate specific skill or pay levels in the newly created jobs.

The inspector general's audit is interpreting obligations in the contract that actually are not there, said Mark Coronado, DOE's Richland office's program manager for economic transition, and Tom Patton, a TRIDEC senior vice president.

Fluor's contract is not designed to replace each lost Hanford job with a clone in pay and skill level, they said. Instead, Fluor's contractual obligations are tailored toward helping diversify the Tri-City economy in general, Coronado and Patton said.

Coronado said the inspector general's conclusions will not affect past fees Fluor earned for meeting economic development obligations in its contract.

Both sides cited the same Hanford contractual and economic planning documents to back their stances.

At one point, the inspector general's report criticizes those documents for not providing enough details on the "quality" of any new jobs.

But the report also contended: "Reasonable readers of these documents will conclude that (DOE's) intent was to replace Hanford jobs with jobs of comparable skill and wage levels." The inspector general's report zeroed in on 102 new telemarketing jobs created in fiscal 1997 that pay an average of $21,000 a year, compared with a typical lost Hanford job paying $55,000 annually.

The report stated each $55,000 Hanford salary translates to adding $116,000 to the local economy after economic ripple effects are factored in.

But Patton said most new jobs coming to the Tri-Cities cannot realistically reach Hanford's high average annual wage of $55,000.

"We'll have a helluva time bringing an average Hanford wage here. But we're trying. ... But we're also trying to diversify the local economy," Patton said.

Patton said Washington's highest average 1996 annual wage was $34,000 in King County. In 1996, the annual average wage was $30,294 in Benton County and $20,640 in Franklin County.

"If $21,000 in a Franklin County (telemarketing center) is not enough, what do we tell people in Franklin County making less than that?" Patton said.

In 1996, Fluor Daniel won a five-year contract that included an obligation to help create 3,000 new non-Hanford jobs during those five years to counter Hanford jobs lost through budget cuts and streamlining.

Fluor's first-year goal in fiscal 1997 was 200 new jobs. The second- year goal was to build to an accumulative total of 500 new jobs.

DOE credited Fluor for 201 new jobs in fiscal 1997, and currently is scrutinizing figures to see if it reached the 500 mark in fiscal 1998.

Meanwhile, Fluor's seven-company team and its six enterprise companies shrank by 1,220 people from 8,269 workers on Oct. 1, 1996 to 7,049 employees on Sept. 30, 1998.

The DOE inspector general's audit looked only at Fluor's first year performance. It concluded:

61 new jobs were comparable with lost Hanford jobs.

102 were telemarketing jobs.

28 jobs were not adequately documented for the audit to tell if they compared with lost Hanford slots. Hanford officials disagreed, saying documentation was good.

Six jobs were people managing a Fluor team venture capital fund to create new jobs - and technically were part of Hanford. Hanford officials disagreed, saying they officially existed outside of Hanford.

Four jobs were not new jobs because they competed directly with existing Tri-City jobs. Hanford officials were unsure what the report was referring to.