Senators seek probe of base closing timetable

The chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee sent a letter this week alerting GAO to what they consider a failure by the Defense Department to provide timely information on its base-closing recommendations.

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Collins of Maine and ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., represent the two states hit hardest by the base realignment and closure round under way.

Any delay in receiving information "obstructs the ability of Congress to undertake a substantive review of the secretary's recommendations," according to the letter.

The department has been "on notice" about the need to disclose all data since Congress authorized the base-closure round in the fiscal 2002 defense authorization law and "has no excuse for the delay," the senators wrote.

The Pentagon has said it is scrubbing all information for classified content before it releases data. Several volumes detailing its justifications for closing installations were released Monday.

As part of the BRAC process, GAO must analyze the Pentagon's recommendations, the process and reasoning behind the decisions in a report due to Congress by July 1.

In their letter, Collins and Lieberman directed GAO officials to evaluate whether the department maintained the "integrity of its decision-making process" and to look for any decisions that appear "results-oriented or preordained."

The senators also directed GAO to investigate whether the department devised accurate base-closing cost estimates and whether defense officials considered several alternatives and scenarios.

If the independent BRAC commission adopts the secretary's recommendations later this summer, the two New England states stand to lose several major installations, including Connecticut's massive New London Submarine Base and Maine's Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Roughly 15,000 military and civilian jobs are at stake in those two states alone. In recent days, lawmakers affected by the BRAC round have stressed that they do not have adequate information to analyze the recommendations and defend their installations to the BRAC commission.

"In order to make our case, we need data from DoD," Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said Thursday. "The clock is ticking."

This week, Snowe introduced a bill that would halt the BRAC process if the department does not release data within seven days of the legislation's enactment.

BRAC opponents scored a small victory Thursday, when the House adopted an amendment to the fiscal 2006 Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill that requires the Pentagon to release all BRAC information before Congress provides funds for base closures.

Attempts to halt or stall the BRAC are all part of the process, said Ken Beeks, a vice president at Business Executives for National Security, a group that supports base closings. There are "political demands on these folks who are in areas that are suffering from the decisions [and they] feel obliged to fight back," Beeks said. "And so they're going to pull out the usual tools politicians have at their disposal."