Threat of Closure Gives States Big Case of Base Fever

Last fall, Portsmouth shipyard workers rallied around their employer as government geared up for base closings. (Jackie Ricciardi -- Portsmouth Herald Via AP)

KITTERY, Maine -- It was business as usual at the old Navy base on a recent weekday morning. Teams of mechanics tinkered with a pair of nuclear submarines in dry dock. A Coast Guard cutter arrived back from a choppy tour at sea.

For as long as anyone here can remember, this resilient coastal community -- settled in the 17th century when its tall trees made sturdy masts for merchant sloops -- has been fending off efforts to shut down the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

But now, as the Pentagon prepares to eliminate dozens of domestic military installations and consolidate many others in what is expected to be the largest round of base closings in U.S. history, and the first in a decade, the salt air again is thick with trepidation.

"We know that some people think the writing is on the wall for us," said Paul O'Connor, an electrician who joined his father more than 30 years ago at the Navy's oldest continuously operated shipyard and now heads its largest union, the Metal Trades Council. "It weighs heavy, no doubt about that."

His concern is being echoed in military enclaves across the country, where intense lobbying efforts are underway in advance of a May 16 deadline for the Defense Department to unveil its list of recommended closings. A presidential commission charged with overseeing the process will make its decisions by Sept. 8.

This year marks the last phase in the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission process, often referred to as "BRAC," an initiative designed to cut costs and reconfigure the military's Cold War-era force structure to address 21st century challenges by taking the politics out of shutting down military installations.

"We have through analyses that Congress asked us to do determined that we have significant excess capacity," said Philip W. Grone, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment. "BRAC gives us the opportunity to efficiently and effectively rationalize our force structure to our mission needs."

Over four rounds of base closings -- 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 -- 97 major installations, and hundreds of smaller ones, were scrapped, saving the government nearly $29 billion as of 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon says it still has 24 percent more base capacity than it needs.

Because of the concentration of military facilities in the Washington area, several could be closed or combined with other installations, military analysts said. In the last round, Virginia's Fort Pickett Army base was targeted along with Maryland's Fort Ritchie, near the Pennsylvania border, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in White Oak.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently suggested that the final tally of closures could be smaller than previously believed -- perhaps fewer than 20 percent of the remaining 425 U.S. bases -- because of the tens of thousands of troops stationed abroad who are expected to be relocated to the United States in coming years.

"Regardless, it's going to be a fairly draconian operation, more severe than anything we have seen before," said Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "They are looking for savings on the scale of $7 billion a year. This is the big one."

The official criteria on which the Defense Department's decisions are to be made include military value, economic savings, and community and environmental considerations. In past rounds the base closure commission has accepted the vast majority of Pentagon recommendations.

States and communities that stand to lose thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in economic impact have stepped up efforts to save their bases, employing grass-roots tactics and high-profile lobbying in Washington.

In California, which has lost 29 bases since BRAC began, more than any other state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) appointed former congressman and President Bill Clinton chief of staff Leon E. Panetta to head a committee to make recommendations about how to retain bases.