Committee Steps Lightly as It Considers Closing Obsolete Military Bases

FT. McNAIR, D.C. — In its nearly 200 years of existence, this tidy little fort faced the British in 1812, hanged the Lincoln conspirators after the Civil War, was home to Walter Reed’s yellow fever research and today houses the National War College and Company A of the Old Guard (Third Infantry Regiment).

Company A can hotfoot it double time to Capitol Hill in less than 20 minutes should any threat to the White House or Congress arise.

But is the fort protecting Congress, or vice versa?

Congress for the last decade has stifled any move to shut down military installations and has consistently shuffled in drag step in most attempts to cut back funds.

But now, facing the huge federal deficit, Congress is creeping in where it had feared to tread, having first cleared the political land mines from the terrain. No longer will an individual member of Congress have to face the wrath of his constituency over a particular base abandonment.

Commission at Work

A special bipartisan commission is at work culling through the 3,800 military stations in the United States--some barely an acre and some staffed part time--to see which can be consolidated with others and which can be shut altogether. Late this year, the commission will issue a list.

Under a formula enacted Oct. 12, Congress will face the proposed closings as a package. The President or Congress will have to kill the whole list to save one sacred cow.

With the commission five months into its task, a Senate-House conference committee almost shut the door in its face. A last-minute compromise saved what most agreed was a good idea.

Neither Ft. McNair, nor any of the others that link arms around the capital, are on the endangered list. Besides the war college, it also houses the Inter-American Defense College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. And in the junior officers’ quarters, where the old prison and the gallows and the grave of assassin John Wilkes Booth were, they say that the ghost of Lincoln conspirator Mary Surratt still walks the grounds when night falls over Turkey Buzzard Point.

It is not history that has protected obsolete or under-used bases around the country. It is the dollars and cents spent by the military on civilian labor and in local stores. Their projected loss evokes a crescendo of political howls.

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci has estimated that getting rid of unneeded bases could save $2 billion to $5 billion in an already stressed defense budget. And the Pentagon has gone to great lengths to cite previously closed bases that have found a new life after the military. In fact, there are proposals to use the military acreage and buildings for everything from prisons to shelters for the homeless.

When the defense secretary’s Commission on Base Realignment and Closure finishes by the end of the year, the nation will have embarked on the first mass closing of major bases since 1977. In the 10 years before that, the Pentagon claims it saved $5.6 billion by closing 1,800 military stations.

Less Ambitious

The current effort is less ambitious, but it could yield a permanent office within the Defense Department to review the status of bases around the country.

It is a complicated job, said Hayden G. Bryan, executive director of the commission. Beyond the political touchiness of the issue, the Defense Department must have room to bring home units that may eventually be recalled from overseas.

Now Carlucci is reported to have worked on a list of up to 25 installations that could be parted with. On the day Carlucci was sworn in as defense secretary a year ago, the Pentagon told the Army, Navy and Air Force to trim $10 billion each from their 1989 budget requests. Base closings could be part of those cuts.

Consider some figures to see how much is at stake. The armed forces pay their civilian workers $26.3 billion a year in the United States. They pay their uniformed people an additional $34 billion.

Those funds are cherished from the San Diego Naval Training Station to Maine’s Loring Air Force Base, which the Air Force proposed closing in 1975. That move was stymied by legislators who demanded long and costly environmental impact statements on what life would be like without Loring.

Loring may well be on the endangered list. It was built to cut the bomber run to Moscow and remains long after missiles took over its mission. Also on the endangered list may be Ft. Douglas, Utah, established to watch over stagecoaches and Mormons when the Indians rode in the West.

Just maintaining what the Pentagon calls the military infrastructure is costly. The Pentagon bills Congress separately for these items. In 1988, it asked for about $9 billion in construction and another $5 billion or so for maintenance. That is more than 5% of the U.S. construction market.

Writing in the trade journal Constructor, Pentagon analyst R. E. Milnes says that the 1989 request contains more than 1,000 construction projects at about 600 installations, ranging “from barracks and dining halls to schools and hospitals.”

He says the value of the physical plant of the defense installation is worth $450 billion, and much of it, built in response to World War II and the Korean War, is decrepit.

“Coupled with this age problem is the fact that the composition of our armed forces have changed dramatically with the advent of the all-volunteer force and with the increased emphasis on family and women. There are many more dependents under military care today and five times as many women in uniform as there were 15 years ago.”

While Milnes is making a case for increased spending to maintain military and naval installations, his figures reinforce the image of the base as a valuable revenue source for neighboring communities.

Community Inertia

In some cases, military bases have become a crutch for community inertia. In the wake of the last rash of base closings during the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, the Pentagon listed 70 community projects where replacement of military facilities resulted in job gains.

Air bases became airports: army bases became industrial parks, shopping malls and schools.

In the 1970s when the Glynco Naval Air Station was closed, the town of Brunswick, Ga., faced a bleak future. But the government located the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center on the site, and the rest was divided between a large industrial park, housing and an airport. The station’s payroll was $14 million when it closed. The same area had a civilian payroll of $17 million a year later.

The Defense Department cites similar success stories from the Springfield, Mass., armory to the Sioux Army Depot at Sidney, Neb.; from Florida’s Sanford Naval Air Station to the Benicia, Calif., Military Arsenal; from the Presque Isle, Me., Air Force Base to a Nike site at Malibu, Calif.

“Overall, it makes a difference whether you recognize the situation and try to do something about it,” commission director Bryan said, “or you fight. They’ve been fairly successful in fighting over the last 10 years.”