The battle against base closures: state lawmakers were prepared to fight the most recent round of recommended closings of military bases.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Maine's Speaker John Richardson was stunned when the Department of Defense in May 2005 recommended closing 33 major military bases as well as a host of smaller facilities across the country and realigning another 22.

"I was pretty sure that we were going to get hit in one way or the other," says Richardson, who was term limited at the end of 2006, "but I never thought it would be as bad as it was."

Even though the changes proposed by DOD affected all 50 states in ways both large and small, Maine was among a handful that were particularly hard hit. The DOD list that was sent to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) Commission, contemplated closing the state's Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, the Naval Air Station Brunswick and the Defense Financing and Accounting Service, housed at the former Loring Air Force base.

The potential loss to Maine if BRAC followed DOD's recommendations was significant: more than 6,000 civilian jobs with a yearly payroll exceeding $115 million, not to mention a secondary impact on businesses and commerce near the three bases.

"There were a lot of states that suffered losses as a result of this most recent BRAC round," says Richardson. "But on a per capita basis, we were the heaviest or second heaviest hit in the nation. And that was devastating."

FIGHTING BACK

In a process that would soon be played out in dozens of states responding to potential closures, Richardson and other state and local officials, including Maine's congressional delegation, decided to fight back. They prepared an appeal arguing that all three of the bases were important to the nation's defense.

All the while Richardson, among others, steadfastly avoided the temptation to frame the state's case before BRAC as a matter of economic impact, however serious that might have been.

"The economic hit to a state is usually what gets all of the media attention, but in the end it doesn't hold much water with the BRAC people," says Connecticut Senator Cathy Cook, who was also working with a coalition of state leaders to reverse a Pentagon recommendation calling for the closure of the New London Naval Submarine Base in Groton.

"At the end of the day, when a base is slated for closure, there really is only one thing you can do," says Cook, "and that is to make the argument one of national defense, of why and how this or that base is strategically important."

Cook says the argument has to include what a local base does and whether or not it is vital to national security. "In our case, because Groton was a combination submarine base and school, we didn't think that would be such a difficult argument to make," she says.

Meanwhile in Texas, potential closures included the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, Naval Station Ingleside on Corpus Christi Bay, the Brooks City Base in San Antonio and the Lone Star Army Ammunitions Plant near Texarkana.

"I really could not figure out what DOD people were thinking with those recommendations," says Texas Senator Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, who immediately vowed to do whatever he could to save the state's bases. He took part in a BRAC Response Strike Force that included representatives of more than a dozen state agencies and...