5 'Major' Bases Tabbed For Closure
The commission considering the Pentagon's proposal to restructure hundreds of U.S. military bases voted to shut down five major Army bases in Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia and Michigan.
As it began final voting Wednesday with lightning speed, the nine-member panel also signed off on closing nearly 400 Army Reserve and National Guard facilities in dozens of states, creating instead new joint centers.
The commission decided to side with the Pentagon in closing Fort Gillem and Fort McPherson in Georgia, Fort Monroe in Virginia, the U.S. Army Garrison in Selfridge, Mich., and Fort Monmouth in New Jersey.
Much of the Army's proposal was approved in minutes and as a package.
The panel voted to shrink the Red River Army Depot in eastern Texas, where 25-hundred civilian jobs would have been lost, rather than close it, reports CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv. The commissioners did vote to close Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, but an amendment tells the Army to protect the research work there for the War on Terror.
CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato reports on the efforts of a community near Philadelphia to save its military base.The unanimous vote to return the Army's 1st Infantry Division to Fort Riley and provide thousands of new jobs in Kansas is the last major hurdle before final approval of changes that would add about 2,400 military and 440 civilian jobs to the post.
Known as "the Big Red One," the 1st Infantry Division was based at Fort Riley for about 40 years before its headquarters moved to Germany in 1995.
The decisions by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission came on the first of three days of scheduled votes on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recommendations to close, shrink or expand 837 bases across the country and save $49 billion over 20 years.
Previous commissions — in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 — altered about 15 percent of what the Pentagon proposed as it sought to get rid of bases considered no longer needed. But analysts say the current environment — the emphasis on homeland security and threats in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era — make it difficult to predict just what the commission will change.
Overall, Kansas stands to gain more than 3,500 jobs by 2011 if the commission approves all the recommendations proposed by the Pentagon three months ago.
"We had no reason to believe that the BRAC commission would want to change the recommendations realizing the significant military value of Ft. Riley," Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Wednesday. "With this vote, we are one step closer to bringing the Big Red One home."
On Thursday, the commission is expected to approve plans to move more than 200 personnel to Fort Leavenworth and add more than 700 personnel to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita and Forbes Field in Topeka.
The only other loss for the state under the Pentagon plan would be the closing of the Kansas Army Ammunition Plant near Parsons, a move that would drop 167 personnel.
"It's not about just trying to get rid of excess capacity. It's actually about trying to reorganize the forces for future challenges," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. "That makes the outcome harder to call."
The Pentagon proposed closing or consolidating a record 62 major military bases and 775 smaller installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years, streamline the services and reposition the armed forces to face current threats. It's the first such effort in a decade to reconfigure domestic military bases and the most ambitious by far.
Announced in May, the proposal set off intense lobbying by communities fearful that the closures and downsizings would hurt their economies and by politicians worried they would be blamed by voters for job losses.
"It's perfectly between Washington, New York, the whole East Coast. It just is a very strategic place," Dan McCaffrey of the Willow Grove, Pa., Chamber of Commerce told CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato.
The 62-year-old Willow Grove Naval Air Station is on the Pentagon's chopping block. With pleas and pep rallies and T shirts that say "Save Willow Grove," residents have tried to convince the commissioners that the National Guard facility should be spared.
"The total there is 7,000 people. They draw a salary there," McCaffrey said, but it's more than just 7,000 people.
"Their families, their kids, their schools, their wives have jobs," McCaffrey said. "They're just not moving."
In the months since the plan was unveiled, commissioners reviewing it have voiced serious concerns about several parts of it.
The most contentious issues have been the Air Force's proposal to strip aircraft from about two dozen Air National Guard facilities (including Willow Grove) and the Navy's efforts to scale back its forces in New England. They include closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine and Submarine Base New London in Connecticut, as well as sharply reducing forces at Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine.
Commissioners fear those proposals could hamper homeland security, a contention the Pentagon rejects.
The panel, chaired by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi, must send its final proposal to President Bush by Sept. 8. The president can accept the report or order the commission to make changes, a scenario considered unlikely given that his predecessor, President Clinton, was criticized for such intervention in 1995.
If Mr. Bush accepts the proposal, it will become law in about nine weeks unless Congress passes a joint resolution rejecting it. Lawmakers haven't taken that step in any of the previous base-closing rounds.