Posted on 05/14/2005 10:10:44 AM PDT by Fido969
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Maine takes big hit
By BART JANSEN, Washington Correspondent
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. E-mail this story to a friend
Staff photo by Shawn Patrick Ouellette
Maine Sen. Susan Collins rips into the base-closure recommendations at a Friday press conference in Brunswick. With her, from left, are U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, Gov. John Baldacci, U.S. Rep. Tom Allen and U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.
With Maine bearing the brunt of a plan to restructure the nation's military, lawmakers and community leaders vowed Friday to fight plans to close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and halve the number of active-duty military personnel at Brunswick Naval Air Station.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed eliminating nearly 7,000 military and civilian jobs in Maine, second only to the 8,586 total job losses recommended for Connecticut. Maine also ranked second in per-capita losses, trailing only Alaska, which stands to lose 4,619 jobs.
Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C., would experience a net loss of jobs in the reshuffling. Overall, the proposed changes would cut about 218,000 military and civilian jobs but add about 192,000, for a net reduction of about 26,000 jobs, according to the Pentagon analysis.
The recommendations, which must be reviewed by the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission before taking effect, are part of a massive nationwide effort to match the combined savings from four previous rounds of base-closings. The Pentagon proposes to close 33 major bases and about 180 military installations from Maine to Hawaii.
The reactions in Maine included defiance. "To hell with you. We're gonna stay open," said Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trade Council, directing his comment at Rumsfeld.
While acknowledging the difficulty in getting removed from the list, officials pledged to fight the recommendations before the BRAC commission, whose members will tour the affected bases and hold hearings on closures. Closures are expected to start within two years after the list is finalized later this year.
"Obviously, this is a stunning and devastating decision," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "It is a very unwarranted loss and flies in the face of reason, logic, strategic value, and it certainly is a blunder of epic proportions, nothing short of a travesty."
The Kittery shipyard, which specializes in repairing nuclear submarines, would lose 4,510 jobs, including 201 active-duty military personnel. The impact would be felt in Maine and also in New Hampshire, where roughly half of the shipyard workers live.
Brunswick would lose a total of 2,420 jobs - nearly half the active-duty military personnel at that base. The BNAS mission would change because its P-3 Orion aircraft would be sent to Florida.
The two bases bring more than $465 million annually to the regional economy through payrolls alone.
"It'll be awfully hard to bring in a company that will give the same benefits and pay as much" as the shipyard, said John Goan of Hollis, a shipwright at the Kittery yard.
"Losing all these jobs, the housing market will take a big hit," said Bill Moore, a Brunswick painting contractor who has done work at BNAS. "I think people around here feel it would have been better if the base had closed. If it had been closed, we could have turned this into a major commercial airport in a few years."
Northern Maine would also suffer a hit. In a surprising move affecting a region still reeling from the closure of its military base a decade ago, the Pentagon said it would close the Defense Finance and Accounting Service at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, eliminating at least 241 jobs. The Naval Reserve Center in Bangor would lose seven jobs.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and a member of the Armed Services Committee, argued that the decisions didn't follow the Pentagon's own priorities. Portsmouth is the most-efficient submarine yard, Brunswick's geographic location can't be duplicated, and a former comptroller of the Pentagon praised the accounting office in Limestone as the most efficient in the country, she said.
"It's alarming, it makes no sense and it's inconsistent with our national security needs," Collins said.
The losses are worse than the Pentagon reported, Collins said, because the Limestone office has 354 workers, not the 241 indicated on the Defense Department's list.
In the only gain, the Air National Guard Station at Bangor International Airport would add 240 jobs.
Portsmouth's ship-repair functions would be moved to Norfolk (Va.) Naval Shipyard, with other maintenance going to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington. The move is projected to cost $448 million and save nearly $1.3 billion over the next 20 years.
Brunswick's aircraft would be sent to Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida, while keeping an operational airfield in the Northeast that could be used to support homeland defense, according to the Pentagon's recommendation. The move is expected to cost $147 million, but save $238 million over the next 20 years.
"The justification for this recommendation contains an operational airfield in the Northeast," said Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine. "It'll become a (National Guard) and reserve center only, I think. I don't think their justification makes a whole lot of sense."
The military studies that led to the closure decisions have been confidential. But the arguments will begin to emerge when the BRAC commission holds hearings Monday with Rumsfeld and Tuesday with the Navy to learn the justifications for closing bases.
In Brunswick, Town Manager Donald Gerrish said the town is eager for more answers about how the changes will affect the community. "We need to get the details of what it is to understand the impact," he said. "It is critical that we get more information."
The congressional delegation, which met with Gov. John Baldacci in Brunswick, promised to fight to protect the facilities.
"This is a recommendation," Baldacci said. "It's not the end."
Neil Rolde, president of the Seacoast Shipyard Association, said supporters of the Kittery shipyard plan to take their case to the base-closure commission.
"With all due respect, we believe that (Rumsfeld) has made a grave misjudgment, indeed a colossal error," he said.
Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, contrasted Maine's losses with large job gains in Texas, where Bush was governor, and Florida, where the president's brother is governor. "You've got to kind of wonder," he said. "I cannot justify the decisions that they made."
Particularly surprising was the decision to close the accounting office in Limestone, where the state lost Loring Air Force Base and several thousand jobs a decade earlier, and which wasn't on anyone's radar for being at-risk.
"That clearly caught everyone by surprise," Michaud said. "That really concerns me."
Collins and Snowe each complained Friday to Navy Secretary Gordon England about the Maine decisions. "I think he's ignoring the facts," Snowe said. "It's exceedingly difficult to open closed minds."
Elsewhere in New England, Connecticut led the nation in total numbers of civilian and military job losses with more than 8,500 personnel affected. Most of those losses would come from closing the Navy's New London Submarine Base in Groton.
In Massachusetts, Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod would be closed. Hanscom Air Force Base, northwest of Boston, stands to gain personnel under the proposal, and the Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick will remain open, according to the list.
The goal of closures is to save money. Rumsfeld said the closings would save $5.5 billion a year after initial closing costs were paid, and about $48.8 billion over 20 years.
Previous base-closing rounds in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 closed 97 major bases. Another 290 smaller installations were closed or consolidated. The Pentagon claims to have saved $29 billion by 2003 from previous base-closure rounds, with a pace of $7 billion each year now.
The closures carry political jeopardy for Snowe, Allen and Michaud, who must run for re-election in 2006 and could be partially blamed by voters for the closings. But each vowed to fight the losses aggressively.
"All I can do is do my job," Snowe said. "Ultimately, the rest is not in my hands."
Looking ahead, advocates must now persuade a majority of the nine-member base-closure commission that the Pentagon made a mistake in evaluating the bases' military value. The commission will review the Pentagon's list and make final recommendations by Sept. 8.
President Bush can then either accept or reject the list in its entirety by Sept. 23. If he accepts it, the list becomes final within 45 days, unless Congress rejects the list in its entirety.
Michaud said he spoke Friday to Anthony Principi, the commission chairman, and expects a fair hearing from that panel.
"It's my hope that the BRAC commission will look at the facts and look at the facilities here in Maine and make a decision which hopefully will reverse what we're dealing with," Michaud said.
During the next four months, at least two commission members will visit every base recommended for closure. The commission will also hold regional hearings, where local advocates can offer arguments about why a decision was mistaken.
Staff writers Dennis Hoey, Paul Carrier, Elbert Aull and Jen Fish and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Washington Correspondent Bart Jansen can be contacted at 202-488-1119 or at:
bjansen@pressherald.com
Olympia Snowe is all the time voting against America, so why not simply push Maine outside the US defense perimeter ~ kind of like an East Coast Oregon!
Reckon the President thinks so too?
Quite a bit has gotten shifted to the south. Having served in RI and VA, I have to admit working on the ship was a whole lot easier in VA during the winter.
yep and our main threats are now well to our west now, not to our east as it was for the previous 70 years or so....
Closing Portsmouth makes sense. The Navy is adjusting forces to the west coast, and the east coast has too many shipyards. In the 90's they closed down Mare Island Naval Shipyard by San Francisco because the Navy didn't need a redundant west coast shipyard. Portsmouth is a small redundant shipyard, and it is a very logical choice to close. Just because people aren't happy with the choices the Navy made doesn't mean that the choices are wrong, or political. Washington, a hardcore blue state is gaining military jobs. For a logical reason--it is the closest state to NK and China.
If Washington is the closest state to North Korea and China we should be pulling our military operations out of there as fast as possible.
The moose are scared.
ahem...Sen. Snowe...do not play chess with GW Bush.
"Obviously, this is a stunning and devastating decision," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "It is a very unwarranted loss and flies in the face of reason, logic, strategic value, and it certainly is a blunder of epic proportions, nothing short of a travesty."
Now do you REALLY think RINO Olympia snow knows the meaning of all the big words she used?
(Thanks for all your die-hard support for Republican efforts, Olympia. Now maybe you understand that getting stabbed in the back feels like.)
Would you want to keep troops in an area where teachers inform children that their parent's shouldn't be involved in an illegal war? That teacher is still working.
When our youngest son was still in son he was involved with JROTC. He manned a table for a wreath raffle at the local mall in uniform for a JROTC fund raiser. While leaving the mall he was confronted by three middle eastern men with a strange accents. The accents were not just foreign but also had a southern drawl. A shoving match ensued which went no further. I did report the incident which was quickly brushed off by the Bangor Police department. My son was already in the delayed entry program so I also reported this to the DOD.
Why should the DOD support bases where the taxes are high, heating costs are through the roof and the locals think that they should be supported by the government? It isn't cost effective and a lot of the local people treat the Military as something to be loathed.
At least Snowe is not one given to hyperbole!
She even talks like a Dem...
If you saw a guy run over by a bus in the street would you run up to him and say: "Well, don't feel sorry for yourself, some people just get run over by busses."
Is this maybe a little reminder to refocus on her priorities and quit siding with the democrats all the time ?
Idiot.
>>>>"Obviously, this is a stunning and devastating decision," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "It is a very unwarranted loss and flies in the face of reason, logic, strategic value, and it certainly is a blunder of epic proportions, nothing short of a travesty." <<<<<<
Is she talking about base closings or the Senate Filibuster---Bwahahahahahahahaha
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