Up to 50 Military Bases Face Closure, Carlucci Predicts

The Defense Department could close 20 to 50 inefficient military bases across the country next year under an unprecedented deal being negotiated with Congress to short-circuit the usual political obstacles, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci predicted Wednesday.

The deal, still awaiting final action in Congress, would eliminate for one time only a series of procedural requirements, including environmental impact statements, that opponents have used in the past to block proposed base closings.

At the same time, Carlucci would remove himself from the choice of bases to be closed and turn the decision over to a specially appointed Defense Department panel consisting of businessmen, former congressmen and retired military officers.

Assurance of Savings

“It is the right thing to do, but it is very, very hard,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) told Carlucci during a hearing Wednesday. “We need an absolutely airtight case that there will be significant savings and that there is no other way to get there from here.”

Many members of Congress charge that the Pentagon has used base closings as a weapon against its political foes. During the Pentagon’s fight to revive the B-1 bomber program in the early 1980s, several lawmakers critical of the program said the Pentagon threatened to close bases in their districts or to remove them from the list of bases that might house the new bomber.

In 1985, former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger offered Congress a list of 22 bases whose closure would save $450 million a year. Each was in a Democratic congressional district, critics noted.

On May 3, however, Carlucci took himself out of the process by naming a nine-member bipartisan panel to review the 871 military facilities and installations in the United States and to determine which would yield the greatest savings at the least cost, if closed. The advisory commission is to be chaired by former Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.) and former Rep. Jack Edwards (R-Ala.).

Promises to Act

The panel is to submit its recommendations by Dec. 31, and Carlucci has promised within 15 days to order the closure of the bases on the panel’s list. His order would come in the final days of the Reagan Administration, which ends next Jan. 20, and he said the new Administration would be insulated from the inevitable political backlash.

The result, say lawmakers and Pentagon officials, could be a political and economic first: the orderly closure of bases that could yield savings of billions of defense dollars within a decade.

Legislation is required to authorize Carlucci’s plan. The House Armed Services Committee expects to send the required measure to the House floor by June 1.

The Senate, however, has added an extra feature: a provision permitting Congress, within 15 days of Carlucci’s base-closing order, to enact a resolution disapproving his entire list. The Senate added its base-closing language to the 1989 defense authorization bill, to which the Senate is expected to give final approval any day.

516 Small Bases

Of the 871 military facilities and installations across the nation, 516 are so small that the Defense Department can order them closed without providing Congress or the local citizenry any detailed accounting of the reason or the prospective impact of the move on the local economy and environment.

For the remaining 355 bases, however, the department must issue detailed justifications for its actions, including environmental and economic impact statements. By contesting the adequacy of such reports in courts, local opponents have been able to delay base closings by years and, in many cases, to thwart them altogether, Carlucci told the House committee.

In other cases, Congress has used its power of the purse to block proposed base closings. When the Defense Department announced in January, 1987, that it planned to close Mather Air Force Base southeast of Sacramento, Congress, following the lead of Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), forbade the use of funds provided in a 1987 supplemental spending bill to close the base.

The legislation now moving through Congress would also block this avenue for keeping military bases open.

Other California Facilities

In addition to Mather, with an annual payroll of $219 million, Pentagon officials in recent years have suggested closing such California military facilities as the Naval Air Rework Facility in Alameda, the Naval Regional Medical Center in Oakland and the Army’s historic Presidio facility in San Francisco.

This year’s one-time deal has raised some procedural concerns among members of Congress who fear that the scheme would lead to the dismantling of mechanisms that have given Congress power over many government programs that intimately affect their districts.

“To all members of Congress, it is a matter of congressional prerogatives here,” conceded Aspin. “The right vote is ‘aye,’ but that and 25 cents will get you a cup of coffee.”