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News Index
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Bush Accepts Plan for Base Closures; Fate of 55 Sites is Left to Congress (Associated Press)
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By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press | September 16, 2005
WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday endorsed a plan for closing 22 major military bases and reconfiguring 33, leaving their fate to Congress.
Bush had until next Friday to accept the report from an independent commission and send it to Congress, or to return it to the commission for further work.
The report will become final in 45 days, unless Congress acts to reject it in full. In previous rounds, lawmakers have not rejected reports, meaning that communities probably have little hope of a reprieve for their bases.
Bush had said that for the process to be ''nonpolitical" the commission's decision would have to stand. He received the report last Friday from the nine-member Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or BRAC.
Bush submitted the report as his administration and Congress were preoccupied with aiding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast and addressing other priorities. A Republican-led effort in the Senate to derail the base-closing process, which Republican leaders had feared could embarrass them, has fizzled.
The commission said its recommendations would mean annual savings of $4.2 billion, compared with $5.4 billion under the plan it received in May from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld had recommended closing 33 major bases, and realigning 29 others.
The commission largely endorsed Rumsfeld's recommendation to restructure the domestic network of military bases to save billions of dollars over the next two decades, and to streamline the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
But commissioners did recommend keeping open several major bases against the Pentagon's wishes, including the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, the US Naval Submarine base in Groton, Conn., and Air Force bases in South Dakota and New Mexico.
Massachusetts legislators announced triumphantly this week that despite a Pentagon threat to close it, the Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod will remain open.
They cited a report sent to Bush last week that recommends that the base be realigned rather than shut down.
The BRAC voted on Aug. 26 to send the 102d Fighter Wing to Barnes Municipal Airport Air Guard Station in Westfield.
That vote was widely interpreted by Massachusetts politicians and the media as an endorsement of the Pentagon's decision to close Otis.
But a spokesman for the commission said there had been no change in the recommendation since the panel's meeting on Aug. 26.
The confusion was probably fueled in part by statements that BRAC members made as they considered Otis and dozens of other bases, according to transcripts reviewed by The Boston Globe. Several commissioners, according to the transcripts, said publicly that they were voting to close Otis. Nowhere in the transcripts is it clear that the commission had discussed realigning the base instead.
As part of the plan, the National Guard's 253d Combat Communications Group and 267th Communications Squadron will remain at Otis, and the overall force level of the Massachusetts Air National Guard will remain the same.
Also, according to state officials, Otis could grow at a later date if it gets a new mission, though it remains unclear exactly what that mission might be.
Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and Natick Labs will also remain open under the commission's plan.
Some state officials said the decision to keep Otis open would effectively preserve about 500 jobs there.
But a BRAC aide challenged that number this week, saying that when the 102d fighter wing is transferred, those jobs will not be replaced.
Governor Mitt Romney has urged the US Department of Homeland Security to approve a plan to have Otis host a
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