The most recent Base Realignment and Closure Commission was five years ago, and the next one hasn't even been scheduled yet. But lobbyists are already busy helping military bases avoid the budgetary equivalent of the guillotine.
A handful of Washington firms are making money by helping bases and their surrounding communities avoid the gaze of the next BRAC, whenever that may come. Consider Hurt, Norton & Associates, a small lobbying and consulting shop. It was founded less than three years ago by Robert H. Hurt and Frank Norton, two aides to former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga. As Nunn's top aide, Hurt helped handle BRAC issues for Georgia's military bases. Norton spent 27 years in the Army and then was its liaison to the Senate. He later joined Nunn's Armed Services staff.
Hurt and Norton parlayed their experience into organizing businesses to push for a continued military presence at local bases. Because no BRAC is scheduled yet, Hurt classifies the firm's work as "local economic development."
One Hurt, Norton client, for example, is the Twenty-First Century Partnership, a coalition of business and community groups in Warner Robins, Ga., the site of a major aircraft logistics and maintenance depot that survived the previous rounds of base closings. Another client is the Quad Cities Development Group, which supports a continued role for the Rock Island Arsenal, a 600-employee facility on the Illinois-Iowa border. The arsenal's capacity has shrunk 75 percent this decade. A third client is the Alabama Power Co., which wants the Justice Department to pay for the redevelopment of a facility at Fort McClellan.
Base closing "is a significant, but not dominant, part of what we do," Hurt said. "Our work on BRAC right now is to emphasize that if you start worrying about these issues after the BRAC is authorized and appointed, then the boat has left the dock, and you're in a canoe trying to catch up."
Perhaps the biggest player in base-closing lobbying is the Alexandria, Va.-based Spectrum Group. It was founded in 1993, but the firm has partners who have worked on base closings since the first commission in 1988. During the most recent round of base closings, in 1995, the Spectrum Group represented 12 communities near military bases. Ten bases escaped unscathed, one was realigned, and one was closed down, Spectrum CEO Paul McManus said. "It's a crapshoot, really," McManus said. "Even if you're not on the list, you have to be very, very careful not to be placed on it at a later date."
Since the latest commission, the firm has landed Arizona and Florida as clients. The firm has helped the states' at-risk bases prepare for an eventual BRAC.
Even former Sen. Alan J. Dixon, D-Ill.-the chairman of the 1995 base-closing panel-is in the BRAC lobbying business. He calls base-closing matters "a very small proportion of my work" as a partner at Bryan Cave, a St. Louis-based law firm. As someone who was lobbied on the base closings, Dixon said lobbyists "certainly had a right to call on us. I can't say, in candor, that it made much of a difference in many cases." A seat on the commission, he added, was "a terrible job-the worst. I'd never do it again. It's like being a hard-hearted banker throwing a widow out of her house."
NEXT STORY: Legal Briefs: Parking spot slip-up