• Base closing commission: The dust settles Base closing commission: The dust settles St. Louis Post-Dispatch — August 29, 2005 The decision last week by the Base Realignment and Closing Commission to endorse the Pentagon’s plan to move some 2,600
• Base closing commission: The dust settles
Base closing commission: The dust settles
St. Louis Post-Dispatch — August 29, 2005
The decision last week by the Base Realignment and Closing Commission to endorse the Pentagon’s plan to move some 2,600 defense jobs out of St. Louis can be seen as dust settling from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2005.
Before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was warning that this year’s round of military base closings would be “the mother of all BRACs.” But the war on terrorism refocused concern on homeland security. A new factor was added to BRAC thinking: How well can military installations be protected?
Military bases are inherently easier to secure than leased space in office buildings. Mr. Rumsfeld ordered his BRAC planners to begin thinking not only of military efficiency, cost effectiveness and impact on civilian economies, but where the installations were located. Being on a base was good; being in leased space was bad.
In the St. Louis area, that worked out well for Scott Air Force Base, whose 13,000 employees get to stay put. It did not work out so well for the Human Resources Command in Overland, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service office in St. Louis and the Missouri Air National Guard’s 131st Fighter Wing at Lambert Field. Combined, the three installations have some 2,600 military and civilian employees.
From an economic perspective, the biggest hit was the Human Resources Command, whose 2,100 employees will vacate a leased building in Overland for new quarters at Fort Knox, Ky. From the perspective of military presence, the biggest loss will be the 15 F-15C fighters stationed at Lambert. They’re being sent to active duty Air Force bases in Nevada and New Jersey.
The St. Louis congressional delegation made a strong, if belated, effort to save the jobs here. The delegation’s proposal to expand the Human Resources Command facility here might have been convincing had 9/11 never occurred. The Overland facility has plenty of space and could have accommodated HRC employees from around the country easier than Fort Knox. But the facility on Page Avenue is not a military base and is leased from the General Services Administration.
The BRAC commission overruled the Pentagon’s recommendations in several high profile cases around the country – among them Portsmouth shipyard in Maine, the New London submarine base in Groton, Conn., and Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota – but generally went along with efforts to close off-base facilities. In Crystal City, Va., the office-tower complex near the Pentagon, the BRAC will open up hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space.
The commission’s report must be submitted to President George W. Bush in two weeks, and then will be submitted to Congress. Congress can not alter any of its recommendations, but merely vote yay or nay – or more likely, let it go into effect without a vote.
Given the Pentagon’s inflated accounting, there’s no certainty that this year’s BRAC will actually save any money. It’s more likely that it will make military facilities in the U.S. more secure from terrorist threats. And, for sure, it opened up a lot of office space.
