When the Defense Department kicked off its first round of military
base closures in 1988, officials expected the process would take
about six years. That timeline grossly underestimated the complexities
associated with base closures, said Arden Roberts director of the
Base Realignment and Closure Division, Army Forces Command (FORSCOM).
Thirteen years after the first BRAC round, said Roberts, the Army
has yet to complete the closures of all those bases.
“We had a misconception back in 1988, a misconception born
in the context of ignorance, because we’d never done this
before,” Roberts said. “Not that we’d planned
improperly, we just really did not know what the ramifications would
be to dispose of and dispense with very large numbers of [defense]
properties.
“We thought it would be a six-year disposal process. We now
know that it is a much longer process.”
Forces Command uses a four-phase process for each round of BRAC,
he said. The first phase is data collection, where every square
inch of property is measured and evaluated. The second phase is
the actual closure of the installation. The third phase is environmental
cleanup and cultural rehabilitation. The last phase is the disposal
of the property.
Each of these phases, said Roberts, were expected to take about
18 months, thus establishing a six-year process. “We have
found, since the first BRAC round, that we can get through phase
one quite easily in an 18-month period.” The closure phase
can take from 18 months to 24 months. “Phases three and four
are turning out to be about 10 years,” he said.
“We did not anticipate the amount of work load that would
be associated and also the public interest and the public need to
participate in the environmental remediation of our installations,”
said Roberts. “We didn’t anticipate the processes we’d
have to go through, and the length of time it would take to actually
dispose of the properties and the amount of time and effort and
activity that the local communities and the state governments wanted
to get into.”
The Army is still working on 1988 BRAC installations. FORSCOM has
closed all of its installations, he said. The Army has closed 137
sites. “We’ve closed them, but we haven’t completed
all four phases of the BRAC process.”
Forces Command has closed or realigned 84 sites that were under
BRAC 1991, 1993, 1995. “Of the 84, we have 18 that we’re
still working, that aren’t disposed of yet,” said Roberts.
For example, Fort Hunter-Liggett, in California, has not closed,
but rather downsized. “We have realigned that installation,
and we’ve come up with an excess of about 110 acres and 135,000
square feet of facilities. We have realigned it, but have not disposed
of all of the property yet.”
FORSCOM has 85 out of the Army’s 135 BRAC projects. Other
major commands that have BRAC sites include TRADOC (Training and
Doctrine Command), Army Materiel Command, Military District Washington
D.C., Military Traffic and Management Command, and Medical Command.
Approximately, $5.3 billion has been spent to date on U.S. military
base closures. The Army’s budget for base closures this year
is about $400 million, said Roberts. “Next year, it drops
to about $230 million, the year after, to about $140 million. ...
But those numbers may change,” he said. “That is not
money that is set aside way in advance. ... We have to vie for our
operating money every year, just as all the other Army activities
do.
“We’ll have to go out and vie with the Department of
the Navy and the Department of Air Force for available dollars,”
said Roberts. The war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,
for example, will drain dollars from non-wartime expenses, such
as environmental cleanup. “As priorities change, as needs
change, then even current year budgets can change,” Roberts
said.
By law, Congress provides funding to the Department of Defense
to execute the BRAC process. When the process started in 1988, it
was assumed that any monies derived from the sale of BRAC properties
would then go to fund the next BRAC round, and then those profits
would fund the next BRAC round, and so forth, explained Roberts.
Profits have not materialized, he added. “What has occurred
is that we have not sold much of the property. Other programs have
come on to the scene since 1988. For example, many of our properties
are being transferred to local entities through PBC’s, or
public benefit conveyances. Public benefit conveyance of the property
is free to local governing bodies.”
For example, if a piece of property is being turned over to a particular
city, that city may want to turn that property into a park or a
school or a fire station. “That’s construed as a public
benefit, so the property would be transferred, at no cost, under
a public benefit conveyance. Many of our pieces of property have
gone to local governments under a PBC, so there’s no money
gained there,” said Roberts.
“We also have an EDC, a no-cost economic development conveyance,”
he said. BRAC properties are transferred to a local reuse authority,
which are approved by the state government and the Defense Department,
so they’re somewhat of a pseudo-governmental agency. The property
goes to that local community in order to facilitate development
of the property to turn it, for example, into a business park, or
to defray the loss of jobs that occurs when closing the base. “The
property, just like a PBC, would be transferred to the local entity
at no cost,” said Roberts.
At times, Congress has written language in one of the appropriation
bills that says that a certain BRAC property would be given to a
government entity at no cost or at less than market value. The result
is that “we are not selling all of our properties, which means
there aren’t large infusions of dollars that are being sent
back to the government to defray further costs.”
Consequently, the Defense Department has to pay for the cost of
closing these BRAC sites.