If for the past three years a BRAC oversight committee was supposed to be helping communities deal with local impacts of the biggest military move in U.S. history, why are we victims of gross under-sight?
According to a Government Accountability Office report on the 15-year-old Base Realignment and Closure process, a committee mandated by President Bush to ensure communities are not crushed by Department of Defense moves has not met since November 2006.
The report says local “planning efforts have been hampered by a lack of consistent and detailed information about anticipated DOD personnel movements. … Communities lack the detailed planning information, such as the growth population demographics, necessary to effectively plan and obtain financing for infrastructure projects.”
This failure of the secretary of defense to provide “the high-level leadership” under its own directive leaves communities identified as “substantially and seriously impacted” in a bureaucratic limbo that will clog roads, crowd schools, overwhelm utilities, burden housing, increase taxes and negate many of the expected benefits BRAC jobs will bring.
Worse, the inability of local and state governments nationwide to prepare for the influx of more than 173,000 personnel ? and even more family members and contractors ? in 20 communities by 2012 could impede the missions of those bases.
Three of those “high-impact” communities are in Maryland, and already we know that in transportation alone people are going to have trouble getting to work on time no matter what we do now or how much we spend.
DOD projects growth by 28,000 families in Maryland from expanding Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort Meade and Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. APG, Fort Meade and Bethesda missions are immediately critical to national security. If their personnel can?t get to work, find housing and educate their children, if they must endure water shortages and brownouts, they?ll go work someplace else for somebody else.
We need employees with knowledge and skills in demand all over the nation and around the world. Patriotism only goes so far if they must live in communities suffering “infrastructure challenges,” as the GAO euphemism puts it. Based on the GAO report, our local, state and federal servants reflexively demanded more money. OK. Money is necessary.
But it will be wasted without “a clearinghouse for information sharing which could more effectively match government resources with the needs of DOD-impacted communities.”
That costs nothing. GAO says, “DOD agreed with our recommendations.” Good. Now turn under-sight into oversight.
RESOURCES:
BRAC GAO Report (PDF file)
BRAC GAO Report Highlights (PDF file)
President’s Order (PDF file)
Assistance available to communities (PDF file)
LINKS:
Official Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission 2005 site
