Correction on my previous post. Ft McCoy employs 1,415 civilians; 845 military; 869 contract (according to thier website)
Brian
As I understand it, Congress must give the entire unmodified list an up-or-down vote. That is the only way to ever get any base closed.
The DEFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) unit is closing down here in downtown Cleveland. That’s 1100 civilian employees with no jobs. The DEFAS was the 4th or 5th largest employer in Northeast Ohio I believe. Bad economic times ahead for a city already financial depressed.
Interestingly, today in the press conference with Ft. Buchanan, PR, CO Col. Steve Ackman (have met him, cool dude, history buff) he mentioned that most of his minimal () realignment losses already happened. One particularly ignorant press droid had to have it explained to her that the soldiers go where they’re told, and the civilians can actually move to the new location (Ft. Sam Houston) .
(()= People here thought it was a total goner. Instead they’ll just close a whole bunch of Reserve Training Centers and NG Armories and relocate their units to now-idle space inside Ft. Buchanan)
Because I work for the PR Legislature’s committee that deals with this stuff, I got a look at the BIG report (14 Megabyte PDF. You don’t want it, and I ain’t putting it in my home PC, go to www.defenselink.mil/brac if you’re such a masochist). In the end, we have something like a net job loss of 165 people in SJ, 15 people in Aguadilla, and 5 Armories/Reserve Centers move over to just 3 bigger facilities. Even a bit of Roosevelt Roads NAS gets resuscitated for the Reserves.
OTOH, I took a look at Connecticut while poring over that monstrous document.
:eek:
They’re proposing shutting down New London, Doper submariners.
:eek:
Completely. Docks, base, school… Move it all to Georgia and Virginia.
:eek:
9.4% of the jobs in the New London Statistical Metropolitan Area.
:eek:
THAT is pain.
They also propose shutting down Portsmouth. And taking the actual Air Wing away from the NAS in Maine. Not a good day for New England Navy Bases.
I’m wondering why they put Umatilla and (I assume) the other chem weapons depots on the list. Those are going to close anyway when they get done incinderating all the munitions, aren’t they? Umatilla will certainly close, as there’s nothing else there and it needs a lot of environmental cleanup before it can be used for anything else.
In part, [b[dtilque**, for the same reason they put in a relocation that was already in this FY’s budget for Ft. Buchanan – those are the easiest to justify, they’re gonna happen anyway, you just make it official and permanent.
In part, because when you DO announce some place like Umatilla is officially shutting down when they finish THIS mission, you know you no longer have to bother to appropriate anything but the cleanup… IF there’s a cleanup.
But that seems to violate the purpose of the list. The idea is to propose new closures/realignments and get Congressional approval. If Congress doesn’t approve the plan, will they not close Umatilla or realign Buchanan? I don’t think so. Someone wasn’t thinking straight when they made up the list. Or maybe they have the idea that putting these on will help get it passed
They want them to STAY closed/realigned.
The alternative is that the closures and realingnment be done according to whether the post is in the home state of the Majority Leader, or the prime contractor for the shipfitting is a big donor to the Prez, or whether someone at the Pentagon is still pissed off that a local politico protested the pollutants from the base rather than bow down to “national security”, regardless of military need.
The 1990 BRAC Act makes it so that once the hearings, meetings, lobbyings, wailings and gnashings of teeth (and ocassional kickings-in of teeth) are done and the unelected committee hands George W. the final version of Donald’s list next September, Congress gets to vote up or down on the whole list w/o the possibility of amending it, and nobody can then try to spare their home-district base by sneak-attaching a rider to that effect to some other unrelated bill. BRAC is just a way for the Pentagon to make sure that the operations they want to reorganize according to military plans WILL BE reorganized according to military plans.
And yes, it helps if you can tell a senator, “Yes, we just sodomized your home town. But look! We also hit Pensacola, and Ft. Monroe, and Ft. MacPherson, and Umatilla, four NG armories in PR!”. Generals and Defense Assistant Undersecretaries don’t make it to an office in the Big Building w/o proven skills with the BS-spreading shovel.