New England Celebrates Base Rescues
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WASHINGTON – Bucking the Pentagon, a federal commission preserved a major military presence in New England yesterday by keeping open two historic Navy facilities that together provide 12,000 jobs for a defense-dependent economy.
The independent panel sped through the first day of its final decisions on the plan it will send to President Bush, who can accept it or order changes. Congress also has a chance to veto the plan but has not taken that step in four previous rounds of closures.
The commission signed off on most of the Pentagon’s plans to close, shrink, or expand hundreds of small and large Army and Navy facilities from coast to coast. It has yet to take up any Air Force proposals, including the contentious question of whether the service can strip aircraft from about two dozen Air National Guard facilities across the country.
Later this week, the commission will consider that proposal as well as the one that has caused the most political consternation, the Air Force’s attempt to close Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, home to freshman Senator Thune. He argued during the 2004 campaign that he – not Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle – would be in a better position to save the facility, but it showed up on the Pentagon’s closure list anyway.
In some of its first decisions, the commission voted to keep open several major Army and Navy bases that military planners want to shut down, including the Portsmouth shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and the New London submarine base in Groton, Conn., two of the Navy’s oldest bases.
“Yahoo!” exclaimed Senator Lieberman, a Democrat of Connecticut. “Submarine base New London lives, and I think that it will live forever.”
Congressional delegations, retired Navy officers, and others had fiercely lobbied the commission to spare the two bases, arguing that the economic impact would be devastating and the region would be unprotected in the face of terrorist threats. Commissioners had the same concerns.
The survival of the two bases marked big wins for New England congressional delegations and governors. Even as the commission was voting, elected officials from those and other states – such as Senator Hutchison, a Republican of Texas, Governor Bush of Florida, and Mr. Thune – attended the hearing and served as visual reminders of their efforts.
Some analysts have said closing both the shipyard and the submarine base would devastate the economy along the coast from Maine to Rhode Island. Loss of the submarine base, which President Carter, a dozen admirals, and high-ranking Congress members opposed, would have cost about 8,000 jobs, and closing the shipyard would have cost 4,000, some estimated. Many more jobs at businesses that depend on the bases also were at risk.
The commission did, however, decide to close Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine rather than drastically reduce forces there as the Pentagon wanted. Commissioners argued that savings could be realized more quickly if it were shut down altogether.
“They have proved they are not a rubber stamp,” said David Berteau, a Pentagon official who oversaw base closings for the Pentagon in 1991 and 1993. “But we don’t know yet what the common theme is because they’re dealing with each of these on a case-by-case basis.”
In other moves, the commission:
* Decided to keep open several other major bases the Pentagon wanted to close, including the Naval Support Activity Corona in California, the Red River Army Depot in Texas, and Naval Support Activity in New Orleans.
* Voted to retain two Navy bases it had considered shutting down – the Broadway Complex in San Diego and the jet training base in Oceana, Va. In a highly unusual move, however, the commission added conditions to those decisions.
* Approved the closure of hundreds of Navy Reserve and Army Reserve and National Guard facilities in dozens of states, in favor of consolidating units at fewer locations.
Before voting started, commission chairman Anthony Principi said the task was especially difficult because Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s proposal included more than double the recommendations in the four previous rounds of base closings combined.
Mr. Principi said the commission recognized that closing bases was necessary to save money and transform the military to meet new challenges.