Pentagon Baits Congress on Closing Military Bases

In President Jimmy Carter’s day, the Pentagon drew up a list of 157 military bases and other installations that it wanted to close, at a savings of $474 million a year.

But Carter, faced with an uprising from members of Congress in whose districts the bases were located, would have nothing to do with it.

Last year Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger prepared a less ambitious plan to close 22 sites. That one got nowhere in Congress either.

Obstacle to Savings

So now the Defense Department has developed a slimmed-down plan to close just three bases, saving $68 million a year. If the plan the department disclosed Wednesday fails to gain congressional approval--and there is no reason to think otherwise--the Defense Department expects at least to drive home the point that Congress is the obstacle to this way of paring back the defense budget.

The three bases happen to be in the districts of three Democratic critics of Pentagon spending--House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr., House Budget Committee Chairman William H. Gray III and Patricia Schroeder of the House Armed Services Committee.

The Defense Department operates 888 military bases around the country, from unmanned radar stations in Alaska to the sprawling complex of naval bases at Norfolk, Va. But, although department officials believe they could save money by consolidating some operations, more than 10 years have passed since they have won congressional approval to close a single base.

By official Pentagon estimates, current regulations imposed by Congress make it impossible to close a base in less than 22 months. But Defense Department property managers believe that a more realistic figure would be at least twice as long if some operations had to be transferred to another base.

“You could do it in four years, but it’s too easy to make it not go smoothly,” said Gerald B. Kauvar, the Pentagon’s director for installation assistance. When a new facility must be built to replace the old one, he said, the Defense Department needs at least six months to study where to move, a year to design the new facility and another year to build it.

“Only after you’ve done that can you start moving people,” he said. And, although closing bases saves money in the long run, it often means added costs at the outset as operations are relocated.

The Defense Department has pockets of support in Congress for closing bases more expeditiously. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) has urged Weinberger for two years to recommend bases for closing.

But more typically, according to one congressional aide who favors base closings, members of Congress threaten to gang up against other Administration proposals until the Defense Department withdraws efforts to close bases in their districts. “When big delegations, like the California delegation, get together, that pulls a lot of weight,” he said.

Can Go to Court

Environmental impact statements, which are required before a base can be closed, can take “years and years” to complete and then can be challenged in court, the congressional aide said. And once a case reaches the courts, it can take years to be heard.

“By then, there’s a different Administration in office,” the congressional aide said. “You just wait them out.”

Weinberger now wants Congress to give him authority to bypass environmental rules, restrictions on the disposal of property and other regulations that could delay his plan to close three facilities--the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, the Army Materials Technology Laboratory in Watertown, Mass., and Lowry Air Force Base just outside Denver--with only 45 to 60 days’ notice.

The savings in annual operating costs, according to the services, would be $6 million at the hospital, $4 million at the laboratory and $58 million at the Air Force base, which is a training center with no active runways. Their duties would be transferred to other sites.

Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), noting that the facilities are located in the districts of prominent Democratic House members, said that Weinberger was “making a statement not about the budget but about politics. . . . He seems to be playing a game of political security and not national security.”

Up-Front Costs

But Pentagon spokesman Robert B. Sims denied that political motivations played a role. Rather, he said, the three sites were advanced to determine whether Congress “is as serious about providing the funds and legislation we need as the secretary and Sen. Goldwater are about closing bases.” He said that about $300 million is needed to meet the up-front costs of relocating employees at each site and moving equipment.

Weinberger held the list to three installations, Sims said, because he wanted to avoid disrupting life at other bases that might be closed until Congress demonstrates a willingness to approve his plans.

Congress showed no such willingness in 1979, when Defense Secretary Harold Brown issued a “hit list” of 157 bases without obtaining sufficient support from the White House.

“We made a terrible mistake . . . by announcing a whole bunch of these closures simultaneously,” recalled Robert B. Pirie, an assistant defense secretary at the time. “It consolidated the opposition and they arose and beat the hell out of us.”

Pirie traced the blame to congressional “sensitivity to the people who work at the bases.”

No White House Support

“We thought we were doing the White House a favor by looking like people who were saving money,” he said. “We turned around to look for White House support. There was none to be seen. . . . The technical merits didn’t matter at all. It was political.”

Pirie still maintains that it is possible to close some of the 888 bases, airfields, training centers, hospitals and other military installations in the United States. He cites the Administration of Richard M. Nixon, which managed to shut a variety of installations while the entire military force was contracting.

“There are clearly too many bases,” he said. As examples, he listed the Presidio in San Francisco, headquarters of the 6th Army, and Ft. Sheridan in Illinois, which houses the Army recruiting headquarters.