During the meeting, according to letters released by the Pentagon, the group promised Martin the state would invest $410 million to expand Hanscom Air Force Base near Boston, the electronic systems center for the Air Force that was almost shuttered by the Department of Defense (DOD) in 1995.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said the intent of the Massachusetts delegation's offer was obvious: They were trying to improve the chances of Hanscom surviving the 2005 round of base closures.
"The review and acceptance of this proposal by DOD and the BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] Commission would set a very dangerous precedent and would likely result in a national bidding war as part of the BRAC process," Hunter wrote Ray DuBois, the deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment who is supervising the 2005 BRAC analysis. "Further, proposals such as this frequently may not translate into reality."
Massachusetts isn't alone in trying to "BRAC-proof" its military bases. Nationwide, states and localities are rushing to pour federal and state funds into constructing new base facilities, buying more surrounding property for bases, even installing free cable television to base housing.
"Most communities and elected leaders know if they did nothing and some other community did something, citizens would be standing up and saying, 'Why didn't you fight to save our base?' " said Tim Ford, director of the Association of Defense Communities in Washington.
Utah Congressman Rob Bishop persuaded state lawmakers during a cash-strapped 2003 legislative year to invest $2 million in taxpayer money to lengthen the old Michael Army Airfield runway in Tooele County to handle emergency landings by Hill's F-16 jets while using the nearby Utah Test and Training Range. The state's investment "did not go unnoticed" at the Pentagon, Bishop said.
But will such efforts make a difference at closing time?
"We've had stranded investments in past BRACs, that's just the way it is," DuBois told reporters recently. "And I'm not going to just sit there and become a victim of promises being made, allowing rich states to victimize poor states."
In the analysis of excess U.S. military installations he is now preparing for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "there is no such thing" as BRAC-proofing, said DuBois. In a letter responding to Hunter's concerns, DuBois wrote that DOD "welcomes any actions that improve military-community relationships and the quality of life for our nation's armed forces, [but] it will not include such promised considerations within the BRAC process."
That hasn't stopped members of Congress from larding the 2005 defense appropriations bill with billions of dollars in projects for home-state bases, projects that were not even requested by the Pentagon. Self-appointed congressional pork- barrel spending "sheriff" Sen. John McCain, R-ArizÂ., says $8.8 billion of the $417.5 billion fiscal 2005 defense spending bill came from special "earmarks" sought by lawmakers.
That measure allocated money to the nation's defense, but the specific policies and programs it will be spent on came via the separate $445 billion defense authorization bill that the White House requested, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in October. As a member of the House authorizing committee for the armed services, Bishop was able to shepherd the administration's requests for more than $40 million to Hill and other Utah bases.
Hill will get a new $5 million deployment center for the 729th Air Control Squadron, a $13 million munitions storage facility, and a $13 million fitness center.
Bishop also has worked to help the Air Force build a ski lodge hotel for service members in Park City and has pushed the state Legislature to buy land almost annually around the air base between Ogden and Layton to stave off encroaching development.
"While other communities are just now scrambling to deal with encroachment, we started doing that 10 years ago when I was speaker [of the Utah House]," Bishop said. "I did receive some complaints over the new fitness center we got Hill from people saying, 'Why aren't you using the existing facilities we have in Roy?' But this is part of their training, not just their fun recreation, and it has to be open when they need it to be open."
Despite allocating millions in state and federal funds to improve facilities and quality of life at Hill, the Brigham City Republican acknowledges the investment may not influence BRAC decision-makers.
"Just because there is a lot of infrastructure there, doesn't mean you're going to save the base, so DuBois is right on that," said Bishop. "Logically, if you built a lot of new buildings, you don't walk away from it, but Tooele is a perfect example of how that doesn't always work."
Following a realignment decision made in the 1993 round of BRAC, the U.S. Army closed the Tooele Army Depot North Area in 1995 despite recently investing in a new state-of-the-art heavy truck refurbishing facility. Today, the former military installation is known as the Utah Industrial Depot.
