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Foes say state lacks space, skilled labor
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | August 24, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Communities set to lose work to Hanscom Air Force Base are making a last-ditch effort to defeat the Pentagon's proposal to consolidate hightech research programs at the Bedford facility and add more than 1,000 jobs there.
Officials from Ohio, Texas, and Alabama have told the baseclosing commission this month they believe Hanscom lacks the space and the skilled workforce in the surrounding area to take on the new projects. The opponents also contend that the Pentagon's decision to expand Hanscom was improperly influenced by a public-private plan in Massachusetts to pay for the new infrastructure.
''Sufficient land for military construction is not available at Hanscom AFB," Representative David L. Hobson, an Ohio Republican who represents employees of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, told the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in recent correspondence. He also questioned whether Hanscom can find ''qualified civilians in the Boston area that are needed."
Massachusetts leaders who successfully lobbied for the expansion struck back yesterday. They provided commissioners with a point-by-point rebuttal of the critics' contentions and urged the commission to uphold the Hanscom expansion plan when it completes deliberations this week.
''We believe that Hanscom's unique position at the heart of the nation's leading defense technology cluster, combined with its sizable excess capacity, make it well-suited to accommodate the mission outlined in the [Defense Department's] recommendation," five members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation told the commission's chairman, Anthony J. Principi, in a letter delivered to him yesterday.
The letter was signed by Governor Mitt Romney, Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, and Representatives Edward J. Markey, Martin T. Meehan, and John F. Tierney. When the Pentagon made its recommendations in May, lawmakers and industry leaders celebrated the proposal to shift work to the Bedford facility from Wright-Patterson in Ohio, Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The renewed debate over the merits of Hanscom's expansion is occurring as the commission convenes today for a four-day marathon of hearings and votes on a final list of closures and reconfigurations to send to President Bush and Congress.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed confidence yesterday that the nine-member panel will support most of the Pentagon's recommendations, which call for closing 33 major bases.
The plan is intended to save an estimated $50 billion over the next two decades and better tailor the armed forces to new threats, although the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says the projected savings are exaggerated.
''I suspect that the commission, when all is said and done, will endorse the overwhelming majority of those recommendations," Rumsfeld told reporters.
The proposals receiving final review by the independent commission this week include closing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn., and relocating the 102d Fighter Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard from Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod to bases in Florida and New Jersey.
Rumsfeld maintained that the Pentagon's recommendations are based on well-documented data compiled over more than two years, and warned that many of the counterarguments now being lobbed at the commissioners by local community leaders are colored by politics.
''We are seeing marketing data from various states and cities and communities tha
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