Ready, Set, BRAC

Starting Wednesday, the Base Realignment and Closure commission will vote on whether to accept hundreds of recommendations by the Pentagon to close or realign military facilities in all 50 states. Maine’s congressional delegation and its governor, along with a ton of support from staff, local groups and volunteers, has made a consistent, well-informed and vigorous defense of the facilities here vulnerable to closure.

Now these leaders must be prepared for whatever news emerges from the BRAC commission, because although the list still must be approved by President Bush and Congress by November, this week’s decisions are likely to remain final. Being prepared includes having a process for economic recovery and knowing how to tap federal funding, but mostly it means leadership, guiding Maine through an upheaval that could redefine the state.

The current BRAC round, involving 60 large bases and 775 smaller facilities for an estimated saving of nearly $50 billion over 20 years, is as large as all four previous rounds combined. It is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s pitch to remake the military according to his own vision, and while the Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon’s estimated savings are much larger than what would likely occur, it is the reconfiguration of the military that matters most.

Any member of Maine’s delegation – nearly any member of any state’s delegation, for that matter – could describe in detail why the Pentagon’s analysis of bases to be closed is wrong. Numbers don’t add up, assumptions about capacity are questionable, those projected savings are squishy. Indeed, in an important New York Times story Aug. 13, eight of the nine BRAC commissioners doubted data supplied to them by the Pentagon. Just as they certainly doubted some of the data provided by the states.

Unless the commission rejects the entire process, it is going to look for savings that can come only through major base closure. Those major bases include Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. It should have an easier time with the broad consolidation plan for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service that would close most of the centers, such as the one in Limestone.

Rather than a question of military readiness, DFAS, appropriately enough, is about money, and the commission seems doubtful about the purported savings. On Brunswick Naval Air Station, there is a growing sense that the P-3s it hosts will remain vital to the North Atlantic.

It’s too late to argue for these bases now, but it’s not too early to prepare for life after their closure. Gov. Baldacci, whose work on this issue has been crucial since the base-closure list was released in May, will be needed even more after this week should bad news arrive here. The next couple of weeks, in the face of economic uncertainty, will demand strong leadership and lots of cooperation as Maine prepares for the worst and hopes for the best.