BRAC's Economic Impact
In dozens of communities throughout the country, people are scrambling to save local military bases from closing, fearing that inclusion on the final Base Realignment and Closure list could spell economic catastrophe.

Although the process has generated sporadic national coverage, the intensity and the tone of local media coverage underscores the potential serious local consequences for communities dependent on the military installation.

Local headlines about the BRAC program include pleas to "Think about us" or warnings about possible consequences of base closings such as "Region's economy tied to fate of military bases."

Banners or T-shirts at support rallies call on the BRAC Commission -- the entity reviewing the Pentagon's proposal before submitting it to President Bush -- to reverse some base closure recommendations: "No BRAC/No Ghost Town/No way."

Lawmakers and municipal leaders also have made impassioned pleas to the BRAC Commission and the public, explaining how vital local bases are and how closing them will have severe economic impacts on their region.

And the political and business leaders have deluged the commission with reams of statistics and dire economic forecasts.

"The loss of 538 military personnel represents 12 percent of the total personnel at the base," Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo told the commission in June in an effort to make his case regarding Mountain Home Air Force Base and Gowen Field. "That loss represents payroll of over $20 million that would vanish from the small local economy."

Fairfax County Executive Tony Griffin told the Connection Newspaper in June that the impact of BRAC in Northern Virginia will cost the county $1.5 billion because 18,420 jobs from the Reston and Bailey's Crossroads area would be moved to Fort Belvoir, Virginia or Fort Meade, Maryland. The result of that move, Griffin warned, would reduce the amount of commercial real estate taxes collected if the department relocates.

An economic impact study conducted by the University of South Carolina and Georgia Southern University and cited by a local "save our bases" committee stated that base closures in the Beaufort, S.C. area would drive younger people out of the state, which in turn would impact real estate value and tax revenues.

Maine officials, meanwhile, predict a recession within the next five years and a loss of 12,000 jobs if the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard or the Defense, Finance and Accounting Service office in Limestone are closed, as the Department of Defense has recommended.

Accounts of what may happen if bases are relocated or closed are sometimes disputed.

One study by the Rand Corporation in 1996 on three base closures in California -- Castle Air Force Base, George Air Force Base and Fort Ord -- concluded that the closures would not have devastating impacts.

Similarly, Pentagon officials have made the argument that many base closings end up benefiting the localities.

"It's helpful to note that many local economies impacted by previous BRAC decisions successfully found ways to get positive results out of a situation that at first must have seemed dire -- which of course, is a tribute to the ingenuity and resilience of the American people," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in May.

Rumsfeld highlighted several examples of this, including Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, 55 miles north of Boston. The base, the first installation closed under BRAC on March 31, 1991, was on the list because environmental studies of the former aircraft maintenance facility found groundwater and soil contamination from jet fuel and industrial solvents.

After it closed, the base was transferred to the Pease Development Authority and converted into an airport, which has provided 2,466 secondary jobs within the community, according to Globalsecurity.org.

Another example Rumsfeld cited was Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. According to Globalsecurity.org, after the base closed in 1993, more than 3,800 jobs and $300 million in annual economic activity were lost.

The community mobilized and redeveloped the base into Williams Gateway Airport, which "has attracted many civilian jobs and its education center is bringing in thousands of students," the secretary said.

He cautioned, however, that "all affected communities will not be able to replicate such results, of course, but every effort will be made to assist."

The Defense Department is helping such communities by providing job assistance training and economic adjustment assistance through the department's Office of Economic Adjustment.

The office's job is to provide "a community-based context for assessing economic hardships caused by the Department of Defense's program changes by identifying and evaluating alternative courses of action, identifying resource requirements, and assisting in the preparation of an adjustment strategy or action plan to help communities help themselves."

The office also conducts a Joint Land Use Study to develop new uses for former military bases.

Despite Department of Defense and local efforts, many communities are still recovering from previous BRAC rounds. According to the Government Accountability Office, "In counties where military bases closed between 1969 and 1988, two-thirds of the communities regained as many civilian jobs as were lost. However, rural base-closing counties lost more than twice as large a proportion of total employment through civilian on-base job cuts as did metro base-closings."

The Congressional Research Services, a nonpartisan service of the Library of Congress, released a report on May 18, 2005 that looked into the socioeconomic impacts of past base closures. The report concluded, "Many rural areas may experience substantially greater and long-term economic dislocation from a base closing than urban and suburban areas. Rural areas with less diversified local economies may be more dependent on the base as a key economic asset."

The report also warned that "small-area economic impact analysis can be a difficult undertaking. Assumptions and supporting statistical reasoning may lead to predictions that are, in hindsight at least, inaccurate."

Besides an immediate impact on local jobs and spending, a base closing also can lead to reductions in tax revenues and population-based funding sources, which in turn affects local government services. The CRS report stated that "school districts with a high proportion of children from military families can experience significant declines in enrollment. With these effects can come related reductions in state and/or federal funding. With the importance given to joint service activity in this BRAC round, many bases would see their functions moved to other bases. Other bases, however, would greatly expand, creating potentially significant impacts on schools, housing, traffic and local government services."

Defense officials counter that realigning the nation's bases will improve the overall efficiency of the military, saving $48.8 billion over 20 years, which will then be invested in new weapons and higher salaries for troops. But for communities, especially in rural areas, bracing for the closure or reduction of bases, the economic benefits of BRAC come at a potentially high cost.

-- Compiled by Chris Han for the Online NewsHour