Base closings: panic or potential?

• Author: Gordon, Dianna
• Position: Military bases - Includes related articles

with 132 military facilities on the government's new hit list, states need to seek the best ways to help localities deal with the impact.

The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission announced its recommendations for another round of military facility closings and realignments ("downsizing" in military parlance) in July. A total of 132 sites - including all five Air Force maintenance centers and involving 63,000 civilian jobs - were recommended for closure or cuts.

In all, the recommended closing of military installations - large like McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and small such as the Naval Reserve Center in Huntsville, Ala. - will affect local economies by eliminating as many as 94,000 civilian jobs. One of the hardest hit could be tiny Guam where 2,665 jobs could be lost and 6,500 more transferred off the island with the closing of three Navy facilities and realignment of two others. California, which lost 26,421 jobs in the last three rounds of closings, could lose nine more major facilities. The loss of McClellan Air Force Base alone, which is on the '95 hit list, would cost 11,000 jobs. Texas stands to lose four bases, the major one being Kelly Air Force Base near San Antonio, where 13,000 jobs would be lost. Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Georgia could see three bases closed in each state.

It's not the end of the world - but it may seem like it to civic leaders, local businesses and civilian employees. "Shocked" was the word used by city officials in San Antonio when told of the recommendation to close Kelly Air Force Base, followed closely by the word "stunned." And the price of peace looks awfully high when the communities that rely on the military for economic stability are told that their bases are going to be closed.

MILLIONS TO LOCAL ECONOMIES

For most civic leaders, the thought of an impending base closing is met with dismay. Take Colorado Springs, Colo., for instance. Twenty-five members of a Defense Mission Task Force met every month last year - 12 months before any '95 closings were considered - to plot strategies for saving Fort Carson, the largest military base in Colorado, with its 17,600 military and civilian jobs and Pentagon expenditures of $536.3 million last year.

Hit hard in 1994 when Lowry Air Force Base closed and took with it 6,300 jobs, Colorado wants to preserve the military presence that remains in the state. The annual statewide military payroll for active duty and civilian personnel is $2.21 billion. Pentagon contracts add an additional $2.62 billion to Colorado's economy.

This time around, the commission has recommended closure of Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver, a move that will claim nearly 3,000 jobs.

California, just now emerging from the throes of a deep recession, took about 52 percent of the national impact of previous base closings and would be hit with 44 percent in this current round. In past rounds, 41 military facilities were ordered closed. But that's not all - the military is now changing past realignment decisions, closing down more portions of a base or laying off more civilian employees than originally planned.

"It's an invisible thing that people don't really see," says Ben Williams, deputy director of the California Governor's Office of Research and Planning. In one California case, the military is changing its plans, but continuing to say it will be "a base realignment." Williams says, however, the plans are "tantamount to a closure since land will be sold, and we're going to lose 1,200 civilian jobs."

SUCCESSFUL CONVERSION NOT THE NORM

Panic, to some extent, is an understandable response when a community learns a base is on the hit list.

Successful conversion of closed bases is not yet the norm. Past closure rounds ordered 41 military facilities - 22 of them major bases...