Maine, N.H. leaders to argue case on base closures

New Hampshire and Maine lawmakers and governors angry over the Pentagon’s failure to provide complete data supporting its base closure recommendations prepared to make their case to the chairman of the independent base closure commission.

“Although we haven’t been supplied the information we feel we’re entitled to, we have enough to show that the Defense Department is just plain wrong” in recommending closure, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said Thursday in preparation for Friday’s meeting with Anthony Principi.

The delegations will “express their continued outrage over the Defense Department’s failure to provide the quantitative data. … This delay is inexcusable and severely disadvantages our ability to make our case,” said Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H.

Maine Gov. John Baldacci and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch also were scheduled to attend the meeting.

Baldacci and other governors from a dozen states sent a letter to President Bush on Thursday asking him to direct Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release all the information and request a delay in the base closing process until the data is made available and there has been time for review.

Federal law, the governors said, requires that the information be delivered no more than seven days after the list of proposed closings is released. The list, which recommended closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and removing aircraft and slashing personnel at Brunswick Naval Air Station, was made public May 13.

Earlier this week, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, threatened to subpoena documents because of the Pentagon’s failure to provide the data. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, introduced a bill that would require the Pentagon to turn over the data.

The latest data delivered to Congress on Tuesday contained the Pentagon’s conclusions, but it did not contain the numbers used to arrive at specific recommendations for the Maine bases, the lawmakers’ complained.

Pentagon officials promised to provide the supporting documents to the nine-member commission but the documents didn’t arrive.

Collins said a strategy meeting of Maine and New Hampshire delegations focused their arguments on several key points: military value of the facilities, costs associated with the closure and realignment and economic effect of those actions.

Also, she said, “we’re going to make the case that each facility is a stellar facility and contributes greatly to the Pentagon’s mission.”

Asked whether the points were in order of importance, she said, “Military value is the most important criteria that the BRAC commission looks at.”

Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., said the Defense Department did not take into account in its recommendations that “Portsmouth does its work more efficiently and more cost effectively than any other shipyard public or private in the country.”

When commission members visit the shipyard, “they will fully appreciate the distinct values that were inadequately considered under the Department of Defense’s costs savings analysis,” Rep. Charles Bass, R-N.H., said. “Year after year, and contract after contract, Portsmouth has pulled through under cost and ahead of schedule, demonstrating its unparalleled excellence and value to our nation’s taxpayers.”

Gregg and Sununu both said that once the nuclear submarine shipyard is closed, it can never be replaced in the nation’s military superstructure. “Once it’s closed, it’s gone,” Sununu said.

Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., said Wednesday that Collins and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., wrote to the General Accounting Office to urge a thorough review of the defense data and to look at whether the data was accurate and sufficient for its recommendations.

Under the base closing law, the GAO is required to provide a detailed analysis of the Pentagon’s recommendations and selection process by July 1.

Snowe said the delegations will tell Principi “that the Pentagon’s recommendations to close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Center in Limestone, and to realign Brunswick Naval Air Station are based on faulty data and assumptions and ultimately would be detrimental to our national security.”