Data on base closures incomplete

Maine and New Hampshire senators received some data Tuesday used by the Pentagon to support its recommendation to close the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and to remove aircraft and slash personnel at Brunswick Naval Air Station.

But the data were incomplete and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe said the Pentagon’s failure to provide all of the requested data was “tantamount to a new level of foot dragging” by the Defense Department.

The data that arrived Tuesday contained the Pentagon’s conclusions, but they did not contain the actual numbers that were crunched to arrive at specific recommendations for the Maine bases, said Preston Hartman, a spokesman for Snowe.

“Without the full information and back-up documentation from the Pentagon, we cannot analyze and assess what led to the Pentagon’s recommendations on Maine’s military facilities in this base closing round,” the senators said in a statement.

Pentagon officials promised to provide the supporting documents to the nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission by Friday, but the documents didn’t arrive.

Maine and New Hampshire officials say the lack of data has delayed preparation of arguments to refute the Pentagon proposal to close or realign bases.

“Every day that goes by is a day less that the congressional delegation and the affected communities can effectively challenge their assumptions and conclusions,” Snowe and Collins said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has proposed closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on the Maine-New Hampshire border and moving half of the active-duty military staff of Maine’s Brunswick Naval Air Station to Florida. He also proposed closing a Defense Finance and Accounting Service facility in Limestone.

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, whose Maine district includes the DFAS center, said the proposal was particularly unfair to the people of northern Maine who already suffered from the closing of Loring Air Force Base in the early 1990s.

The current proposal “puts communities like Limestone in double jeopardy – facing a second closure at the hands of the Defense Department,” said Michaud.

Maine and New Hampshire lawmakers plan to meet Friday with Anthony Principi, chairman of the commission that’s reviewing the Pentagon’s recommendations.

Principi has said the commission won’t rubber-stamp the closure list, so bases could be added or removed. While a commission majority can remove a base from the list, it takes seven members to add a base.

At least two commissioners are scheduled to tour Portsmouth and Brunswick on June 2 and 3, and a regional hearing on the recommendations is scheduled for July 6 in Boston. The commission must give its final list to President Bush by Sept. 8. Bush and Congress then can accept or reject the list in its entirety.