Army officials dismiss BRAC alternative as disastrous
Some opponents of a new independent commission to close military bases have recently proposed the Pentagon instead pick the facilities it doesn't want and ask Congress to approve the choices through the annual budget process.
But two of the Army's top installations officials say that approach would spark the kind of ugly political battles the Base Realignment and Closure Commission was designed to minimize — and potentially be an economic calamity for the communities that get on the Pentagon hit list.
"What you end up with if you if you were to follow that logic to its conclusion is that political clout and partisan considerations would be the deciding factor in where the military would retain infrastructure and where it wouldn't," said Andrew Napoli, assistant for BRAC in the Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Housing and Partnerships.
"Is that really what members want?"
What's worse is the impact such an approach would have on the surrounding communities, he asserted.
"If the Army were to do an analysis and decide that location X ought to be closed and we were to make that announcement in the budget, what do you think would happen to the real estate market and the lender market in that community?" Napoli said. "It would go into a total freeze. No one would want to buy a house. You'd be tainting the economy of an area and then would have the whole fiscal year for the [congressional delegation] to try to kill the proposal. But then after they succeeded in killing the proposal, what's to stop the department from requesting it again the second year."
"You still then have the scarlet letter," added Paul Cramer, the deputy assistant secretary for installations.
Last week, the Pentagon submitted to Congress a study that asserts the Army and Air Force both have about 30 percent excess capacity — and that the Department of Defense overall has 22 percent too much overhead. The report is expected to be considered as the congressional defense committees begin crafting the defense authorization and appropriations bills — though the study's reception was decidedly negative.
Among the leading advocates for a BRAC alternative is Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Kaine told POLITICO earlier this month that he'd “prefer they make the same kind of recommendations about physical infrastructure the same way they do about everything else."
But in a recent interview with POLITICO, Cramer and Napoli addressed head on why they believe any process for closing bases other than BRAC would be a disaster.
Napoli cited an example in Kaine's own backyard to make his point: the Pentagon's attempt in 2010 to close the Joint Forces Command in Virginia.
"He was governor when that occurred," Napoli said of Kaine. "He was quite outraged, as were all the Virginia members of Congress. Obviously, he was successful at stopping the closure of JFCOM so he has a more fond memory of the outcome than he does of the process to get to the outcome. It was hardly a smooth process."
"To say that is a viable alternative to BRAC we just don't see it that way," he added. "And, oh by the way, Congress made changes to the law to prevent future JFCOMs from happening."
Kaine doesn't seem deterred and his staff suggests his proposal has significant support on Capitol Hill.
"Sen. Kaine is not alone among his colleagues in seeing the BRAC process as ineffective, or questioning why the same process that's used to oversee $500B in defense spending cannot be used for infrastructure," said his spokeswoman, Amy Dudley.
Yet the BRAC process — however loathsome it may be to members of Congress — would help minimize such a blood bath, the officials insisted and give communities some predictability and an opportunity to develop a strategy for redeveloping bases that might be closed.
There have previously been BRAC rounds in 1988, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2005. The commission structure was designed so that independent commissioners and staff conduct a wholesale survey of base capacity and mission needs across the military and then recommend to the Congress and the president a list of closures or realignments.
Under the law, the entire list can be approved or voted down but cannot be changed, minimizing last-minute wheeling and dealing by powerful members of Congress.
To those who say BRAC, too, is highly political — with an army of lobbyists hired by communities seeking to keep prized bases off the closure list — Napoli cites the example of the Charleston Naval Base and Shipyard, which was closed under the 1995 round, as evidence of how politics can be kept in check by a BRAC process.
At the time, "South Carolina had Strom Thurmond, who was the chairman" of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Napoli pointed out. "And it had Floyd Spence, who was the chairman" of the House Armed Services Committee. "If there ever was an example where you would think the political clout of the delegation could not have been stronger than South Carolina. Yet the math and analysis showed Charleston should close and therefore it did close."
If Congress is serious about the Pentagon taking the lead instead, Cramer said it would cost about $30 million for the Pentagon to conduct the analysis of which bases it needs and which ones it doesn't.
And in the end, it would likely be a waste of money; Congress wouldn't go for what the Pentagon recommends and the bases would suffer simply by just being on the target list.
"You'd be left with imminent retirees and dead wood," said Napoli. "Anybody who had any prospect of getting another job would leave. The talent pool would dry up."
As for the communities themselves, "the business market wouldn't return until there was some finality of what is really going to happen. That is kind of what BRAC gives you."
