State, local officials lukewarm on base-closing delay

Several lawmakers are fighting to delay next year's scheduled round of military base closings for two years, but many state and local leaders in areas with military installations are less than enthusiastic about the idea.

"The state of Georgia is really indifferent to whether it happens in 2007 or 2005. We'll be ready," says Phil Browning, a retired Army general who serves as executive director of the Georgia Military Affairs Coordinating Committee. Georgia has 13 bases and has spent million of dollars on consultants and upgrading infrastructure around the facilities in the hopes of keeping them open. The Defense Department is scheduled to send a list of its preferred closures to an independent commission next year. The commission will hold hearings before announcing the final list.

Bob Johnstone, executive director of the Southwestern Defense Alliance, which hopes to preserve research, test and training ranges in seven southwestern states and California, says there's never a good time for base closures. But, he adds, "most communities I have talked to are opposed [to a delay]. They want to get it over with and quit wasting money on lobbyists."

Adrian King, deputy chief of staff for Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, says his state is "on the fence" about backing a delay. King says having a guarantee that the state would not lose jobs at its bases for two more years is attractive, but he adds that Pennsylvania could gain work in the process of transforming bases and would welcome those jobs as soon as possible. "To us, it's really a double-edged sword," King says.

Doug Kinsinger, president of the Topeka, Kan., Chamber of Commerce, which represents local Army and Air National Guard bases, backs the delay. With ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, "now is not the time to be cutting infrastructure, and replacing it sometime in the future would be much more costly," he says.

Congress has been split on the issue. The House voted by a wide margin to delay base closures in its version of the fiscal 2005 Defense authorization bill, while the Senate narrowly rejected a similar proposal in the authorization bill it passed last week. The issue will be settled when a House-Senate conference committee crafts a final bill, perhaps as soon as July.

President Bush has threatened to veto the Defense bill if base closings are postponed. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has called for delaying closures until thorough review of the nation's military strategy is completed.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the military wastes billion of dollars annually maintaining as much as 25 percent excess base infrastructure. The Pentagon and the military services are reviewing data to decide which bases could be shut down or realigned. The Defense Department is scheduled to send its list of proposed closures next spring to the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission, appointed by lawmakers and the president. The commission will review the list and hold public hearings before settling on a final BRAC list. Congress and the president then will have to accept or reject the list in its entirety next fall.

Like Congress, federal lobbyists are split on the issue of postponing the BRAC process.

Paul Hirsch, president of Madison Government Affairs in Washington, which represents several states with bases, says that with two ongoing wars and the Pentagon still determining how to reposition forces overseas, BRAC should be delayed. But, he says, communities are about evenly split between wanting a delay and wanting to "just get it over with" in 2005.

Barry Steinberg, an attorney with the firm Kutak Rock in Washington, which also represents military communities battling BRAC, says he's told local leaders that they should focus on 2005 and not back a delay. "They've got stories to tell, and they are as good as they'll get," he says.

William McGlathery, the federal liaison for Mississippi's economic development agency, says there's no point in delaying BRAC because "like death, it's inevitable."

John Armbrust, executive director of the Kansas Governor's Strategic Military Planning Commission, says his state has "no position" on a possible delay and will work with Defense on whatever their schedule is for closing bases.