Report: Base closings not saving as much as expected

WASHINGTON

The Pentagon's most recent round of base closings will save taxpayers less than half as much money as projected in 2005 - now $13.7 billion over 20 years - congressional auditors reported Friday.

The Government Accountability Office said expenses associated with closing bases and relocating workers continue to grow, cutting into projected savings. The military still has more than two years to complete the closings ordered in 2005, and additional cost increases are possible, the report warned.

"We predicted this is exactly what would happen," said U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, a Chesapeake Republican and persistent critic of the base-closing process. He recalled that

shortly after winning his House seat in 2001, he penned an essay for USA Today warning that previous savings estimates for base closings "have fallen woefully short."

Forbes said the new figures reduce the already slim chance that Congress will create another Base Realignment and Closure Commission, a step some Pentagon planners have suggested.

"People who have watched this one will be very leery to jump off this bridge again," he said.

With defense budgets now in excess of $500 billion annually, the new estimates mean that the 2005 closings and realignments will produce savings of less than two-tenths of one percent of defense spending through 2025.

The GAO's cost estimates did not include millions of dollars expended by state and local governments, including those in Hampton Roads, to stave off proposed closures.

Former U.S. Rep. Owen Pickett, who headed a state commission created to help preserve Virginia bases, said the 2005 closing round was undercut by political pressures on the BRAC panel.

"It was a huge disappointment all the way along the line," he said.

While military planners fashioned base closing recommendations based on their projections of what facilities would actually be needed for future conflicts, "a lot of times, politics pushes the decision-making in another direction," Pickett said.

The Navy lost its two biggest closing battles in 2005, as the BRAC C ommission overturned the service's recommendations to close the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and Submarine Base New London in Connecticut.

In Hampton Roads' most prominent base closure fight, the 2005 commission threatened to have Oceana Naval Air Station's F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets moved to a base in Florida. The move, which the Navy opposed, fell through after residents around Cecil Field, near Jacksonville, signaled their disapproval and Virginia Beach agreed to provide $15 million annually to acquire property and block development around Oceana.

Virginia Beach's efforts to provide a buffer around Oceana have since drawn praise from Navy leaders. With about 10,000 military and civilian employees, Oceana is the city's largest employer.

In a written response to the report, the Pentagon did not challenge the findings and agreed to several GAO recommendations aimed at tightening the way it tracks cost and savings estimates from base closures.

While the savings are less than projected, the BRAC changes are "transforming DoD" by better matching its infrastructure with the nation's defense strategy, said a letter signed by Wayne Arny, the Pentagon's top facilities official.

A little more than a year ago, GAO estimated the 2005 closings and base realignments, including the shut down of the Army's historic Fort Monroe in Hampton and a major shuffle of commands at Fort Eustis in Newport News, would save

$15 billion over 20 years.

The BRAC Commission had put the net savings at $36 billion in 2005.

In addition to the revised savings figures, the GAO report warned that the Pentagon is in danger of failing to complete the 2005 closings by the September 2011 deadline set by federal law.

The BRAC Commission's recommendations touched facilities at some 800 locations across the United States, the GAO reported. Work at more than one-fourth of those sites is not projected to be complete until the final two weeks before the deadline, so any delay puts compliance with the deadline in jeopardy, the agency said.

Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com