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Thousands of area jobs at risk as panel meets in D.C.
By Timothy R. Gaffney
Dayton Daily News
DAYTON | The Base Realignment and Closure commission is to begin voting today on recommendations that could affect thousands of Dayton-area defense jobs.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service station in Kettering and the Ohio Air National Guard base in Springfield stand to gain or lose — but mainly lose — jobs and missions as a result of the panel's actions.
The nine-member commission has blocked out today through Saturday to approve or disapprove the Pentagon's recommendations for closing or realigning military bases across the country. It's also thrown its own proposals on the table.
Its list of recommendations must go to President Bush by Sept. 8. He must accept or reject it in whole by Sept. 23. If he accepts, it will become binding after 45 legislative days unless Congress rejects it.
If Bush rejected the list — there's no indication he will — the BRAC commission would have until Oct. 20 to submit a revised list. Bush would have until Nov. 7 to accept or reject it.
While the process is clear, what will result from it isn't — especially just how many jobs are promised or threatened in this base-closing round.
"There's about 100 ways you can slice these numbers," said Jim Leftwich, vice president of aerospace, defense and technology for the Dayton Development Coalition.
The Pentagon cited numbers for jobs pared or moved, costs incurred and savings won in each of its recommendations. Not surprisingly, communities that would lose jobs have challenged the numbers, and the commission itself has sharply questioned some.
The coalition has papered the commission and its staff with the results of its own number-crunching. Its strategy has been a fact-based defense of major operations that are on the block.
Leftwich said the coalition has found glaring errors in some of the Pentagon's numbers.
"I think the BRAC commission itself has started to question them," he said.
The coalition is a nonprofit group of business leaders that has led the region's efforts to defend local military facilities in the BRAC process.
Its top concern is the Defense Department's recommendation to relocate the Development and Fielding Systems Group from Wright-Patterson to Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
The Pentagon estimates it would cost the Dayton region 2,250 jobs, but the coalition says more than 6,000 are at stake.
The coalition says internal Air Force "working papers" show the result would be 6,240 jobs, including military and civilian government jobs, contractor jobs and indirect or "spin-off" jobs.
It argues the Air Force used flawed calculations in figuring the move would save money.
"It looks like a $1 billion loss over 20 years," Leftwich said, instead of the $940 million in savings the Pentagon projected.
The coalition made its strongest objection to the DFSG plan last week in a memo to the BRAC commission staff. It claimed decisions favoring the plan to move DFSG were made "without supporting evidence in order to ensure a predetermined outcome would prevail."
For example, it said a Pentagon group that evaluated the move in January 2004 reduced projected military construction costs associated with the move from $444.3 million to $131 million without explanation.
And the coalition said some savings the Pentagon projected counted jobs already eliminated or scheduled to be cut.
Other endangered major missions here i
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