With less than one month until the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will decide on his recommendations for base closings and realignments, Wisconsin officials are working to keep the state’s military bases off the national list.
Wisconsin is home to four military bases: Truax Field in Madison, the 440th Airlift Wing and the 128th Air Refueling Wing in Milwaukee, Fort McCoy between Sparta and Tomah and Volk Field in Juneau County.
A base’s closure could have a “devastating effect on the local and state economies,” Governor Jim Doyle’s press secretary Melanie Fonder said. The bases contribute an estimated $918 million each year to Wisconsin’s economy and have a combined staff of more than 8,000 people.
Fort McCoy employs more than 3,000 people and has an estimated economic impact of nearly $780 million a year, according to Linda Fournier, the public affairs officer at Fort McCoy.
Rumsfeld will publish a report May 16 recommending base closures and readjustments around the nation. The Department of Defense will have assessed future United States security threats and developed a force structure plan to meet possible threats in the next 20 years. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission will review and revise the defense secretary’s recommendations and pass them on to the president and Congress for approval.
“[The DOD] list … is very hard to get off once you are on it,” Fonder said.
According to Fournier, that is why officials are lobbying for their bases in every state.
Fonder said Doyle met with Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installation and Environment Philip Grone in December. Doyle presented Grone with reports supported by other state officials highlighting the economic and militaristic value of the state’s bases.
Although the committee generally accepts 85 percent of the secretary’s recommendations, in 1991, the BRAC committee added Fort McCoy to the list. The base was later removed after the community went to Washington to plead their case. For this BRAC round, the state gave Sparta and Tomah cities a $50,000 Community Development Block Grant to put together a document addressing the impact a Fort McCoy or Volk Field closure would have on the community.
If a Wisconsin base ends up on the BRAC list, it does not mean ultimate closure. According to Fournier, there are four things that could happen to Fort McCoy as a result of BRAC 2005.
“Nothing [could happen], we could close, we could lose part of the base or we could grow,” Fournier said.
People seem to forget BRAC 2005 could be an opportunity because if other bases close, some of their assets will need to relocate, she added.
Fonder disagreed, saying there are no economic benefits in a Wisconsin base closure.
The purpose of BRAC 2005, according to the DOD, is to optimize military readiness and use of United States defense dollars to prevent terrorism. The four prior BRAC rounds between 1988 and 2001 created a 20 percent reduction in the country’s installation infrastructure, with an estimated annual savings of $7 billion since 2001, according to the DOD.
