Base Closure List Likely to Stand Pat

WASHINGTON â€”  To thousands of communities, the battle to rescue military bases is a matter of economic life and death.

As the Base Realignment and Closure Commission met Monday for the first time since receiving the Pentagon’s list of facilities targeted for cuts or closure last week, lobbyists and unpaid activists thronged Capitol Hill to save their bases.

In the end, however, the commission is considered unlikely to make major changes.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged commission members Monday to avoid changing Pentagon recommendations on base closings and adjustments, saying a change in one location could affect troops somewhere else.

“I did not make a single change in the recommendations,� Rumsfeld said after testifying. “It struck me that to try to reach in and pull a thread out of the center of that or to adjust something would have nonintuitive effects and implications throughout the system.�

In four previous base closing rounds, the commission overseeing them approved 85% of the Pentagon’s recommendations, leaving the vast majority of lobbyists for imperiled bases with nothing to show for months of work.

This year, new rules will make changes to Pentagon recommendations more difficult. It will take a super-majority of seven of the nine commission members to add a base to the closure list, though five votes are needed to remove a base from the list.

The commission has only four months to deal with a list of closures that is more complex than in previous rounds and lacks the resources used by the Pentagon to amass its list.

“The legislation stacks the deck very heavily against adding bases to the closure list,� said Loren Thompson, a military analyst for the Lexington Institute, a think tank based in Arlington, Va.

The panel is composed of defense contractors, former members of Congress and ex-military officers, and some hold out hope that they could surprise critics.

Philip Coyle, a Californian and former assistant Defense secretary once on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commission to save the state’s bases, was known for questioning military weapons testing procedures when he worked at the Pentagon. Former Rep. James V. Hansen (R-Utah) sometimes battled the Pentagon as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee in the 1990s.

“This is an uncommonly well-informed and self-confident group of commissioners,� Thompson said. “It’s not a collection of hacks.�

The panel also includes one member -- retired Air Force Gen. Lloyd Warren Newton, now an executive vice president for military engines at plane engine maker Pratt & Whitney -- from Connecticut, the state that stands to lose the most under the Pentagon’s recommendations.

The commission was created to insulate base closing decisions from politics, but Congress has final approval. Commission Chairman Anthony J. Principi told Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the panel “noted the complexity� of the Pentagon plan.

That plan, outlined Friday, would close 33 major domestic bases and cut 29 more for an estimated savings of $48.8 billion over two decades. The recommendations also would slash or close hundreds of smaller installations and office complexes, many of them National Guard or Reserve sites.

The commission must deliver its final report to President Bush by Sept. 8. Bush may either forward it to Congress or send it back to the commission with his own recommendations. In that case, the panel would have to resubmit its report by Oct. 20, and the president would have to send it to Congress by Nov. 7. Congress would then have 45 days after it receives the report to approve or reject it, but it cannot change it.

Some commission members expressed concern that closing Guard and Reserve sites would force some troops to travel more than 50 miles, a move that would deter enlistment at a time when the Army -- especially the Guard -- is missing recruiting goals. Two used examples from their home states.

The Pentagon has said that earlier base closing forecasts were scaled back in part to account for 70,000 troops who would be returning to the U.S. when foreign bases are trimmed. But commissioners noted Monday that the Pentagon recommendation accounted for only about 15,000 of those returning troops.

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Review panel

The nine members of the government’s base closing commission, which will review the Pentagon proposal and send its recommendation to President Bush by Sept. 8:

* Anthony J. Principi of California, a Vietnam veteran who was secretary of Veterans Affairs in Bush’s first term. He has resigned as vice president of Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical manufacturer. Named to the commission post by Bush.

* James T. Hill of Florida, a retired Army general and former combatant commander of the U.S. Southern Command. Named by Bush.

* Sue Ellen Turner of Texas, a retired Air Force brigadier general and a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Named by Bush.

* James V. Hansen of Utah, a Navy veteran and former Republican congressman who served on the House Armed Services Committee. Recommended by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

* Samuel K. Skinner of Illinois, a former Army reservist and onetime chief of staff and secretary of Transportation under President George H.W. Bush. Recommended by Hastert.

* Harold W. Gehman Jr. of Virginia, a retired Navy admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander. Recommended by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

* Lloyd Warren Newton of Connecticut, a retired Air Force general, now executive vice president for military engines at Pratt & Whitney, a manufacturer of plane engines. Recommended by Frist.

* James H. Bilbray of Nevada, a former Army reservist and Democratic congressman who served on international relations, armed services and intelligence committees. Recommended by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

* Philip Coyle of California, a defense consultant and senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information and an assistant Defense secretary in the Clinton administration. Recommended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

Source: Associated Press