LIMESTONE – One day after it was learned that new accounting systems and the transferring of work out of the Loring Commerce Center’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service could cut jobs there, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe said they have received assurances that the cuts would not involve civilians.

Civilians account for nearly 80 percent of the 300 jobs at the center. Between 23 and 26 military jobs at the center could be cut or transferred to other installations during fiscal year 2002, which begins Oct. 1, according to both senators, who spoke Wednesday with DFAS comptroller Dov Zakheim.

“The DFAS site in Limestone has consistently been cited by the Defense Department as its premier facility,” Collins said Wednesday morning in a press release. “I am assured by comptroller Zakheim that the civilian personnel it employs will not be harmed by the decision to reduce military work force.”

Collins, a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said she was assured that military jobs not cut by attrition would be transferred to other facilities.

Snowe said a national consolidation of services last year resulted in about 20 new civilian and military workers being added to the Limestone facility, noting the planned transfer would simply return DFAS to its original size.

The comments by the senators were greeted with some skepticism at the Loring DFAS facility.

“We would feel good if that is a fact, but we don’t know that for sure,” Vernon Davenport, a public relations officer at the Loring DFAS, said Wednesday. “The conversation was between comptroller Zakheim and Senator Collins.”

Davenport said no one from the Loring DFAS facility was involved in the discussions.

Davenport said DFAS is an agency in the Defense Department, serving its customers to the “best of our ability.”

He said that as practices improve, fewer people would be needed to perform the tasks the agency does.

“We have to accept the positions of the DOD,” he said.

There was no response Wednesday from DFAS offices in Virginia.

A DFAS public relations officer in Virginia on Tuesday said that the installation of new accounting systems, and the transferring of some work to a facility in Omaha, Neb., could reduce the number of personnel working at the Loring Commerce Center in 2002.

The number of people to move from the DFAS Center at Loring, and the number of jobs that may be lost at the center were not known, according to Cathy Ferguson. She said the decisions involving the shifting of personnel had not been completed, and details were not known.

DFAS opened at the Loring Commerce Center in January 1995. As of this week, about 300 people work at the Arkansas Road center. Of that number, 56 are military people, according to Davenport.

The Loring center does finance and accounting work for the U.S. Air Combat Command. It serves 18 bases in the United States, including 20 Air National Guard units attached to those bases. Air Combat Command has headquarters in Langley, Va.