Ready, Aim, Shut Down

By Bruce W. Nelan

The gravely serious man in glasses and a dark suit moves and speaks like the polished trial lawyer he once was. In the dank humidity of an auditorium in the Massachusetts State House, he makes his case insistently, weaving numbers and exposition into a seamless argument. In the future, he says, 60% of the U.S. Navy's shipyard work will involve nuclear-powered vessels. More than half the ships in for repair will be submarines; most of those will be Los Angeles- class attack submarines. "The most experienced shipyard in servicing Los Angeles subs," he declaims, "is the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Charleston has never overhauled a Los Angeles-class submarine. Never. Not one, ever."

This is not just a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, defense advocate in action. This is the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, George Mitchell of next-door Maine. In rows of seats in the auditorium behind him are the entire congressional delegations of Maine and New Hampshire, the Governors of both states and 12 busloads of Portsmouth shipyard workers and their families. His real audience, however, is the group of people sitting at the long table across from him. They are members of the presidential commission that is deciding which of the country's military bases to close or cut back this year.

A conglomerate as large as the Pentagon could hardly escape the restructuring that has been the watchword of corporate America for a decade. The end of the cold war has reduced the uniformed services from 2.1 million members in the mid-1980s to 1.7 million, heading down to 1.4 million or fewer. The defense budget will decline in real terms by more than 40% between 1985 and 1997. This downsizing leaves the U.S. with far more bases, support and repair facilities than it needs. But which ones to close? Even a relatively small base represents vital jobs and millions of dollars to its host community. Closing it will cause economic pain to the area and real hardship to many individuals. So naturally the cities and states marked for base closings are fighting to their last drop of blood, sweat and tears.

To wring the politics out of the process as much as possible, last January President Clinton named a nonpartisan outside panel, officially called the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Former Republican Congressman Jim Courter of New Jersey is the chairman; its other members, four men and two women, are former government officials, retired military officers and business executives. In March they received the Pentagon's recommendation to close 31 major installations around the U.S. Since then they have added 47 others for "consideration." They plan to announce their decisions this week and pass their list to Clinton, who is allowed to make one request for revisions but then must approve or reject it as a whole.

Until then, the battle to stave off closures goes on. The bases under consideration are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps installations, including such well-known ones as Miramar Naval Air Station and Presidio of Monterey in California and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. None of the targeted bases, though, has defenders more fervid than the partisans of three East Coast naval shipyards: at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Charleston, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia. All three can claim long, distinguished service to the U.S. Navy, are particularly proud of being "Navy towns" and typify the head-to-head competition for survival taking place across the country.

Senator Mitchell was making the case for northern New England, his state included. Closing the 193-year-old Portsmouth shipyard, he said, would cost more than 5,000 jobs and an annual payroll of $270 million. New Hampshire residents had watched neighboring Pease Air Force Base, with a $107 million annual payroll, close two years ago, and they know Loring Air Force Base in Maine will not last much longer. "Basic fairness," the Senator said, "dictates a third strike not be dealt on an already troubled region."

For their part, the Charleston defenders were not letting Mitchell's invidious remarks go unparried. In fact, the venerable South Carolina city had cranked up a campaign long before, because its shipyard was on the originally proposed Pentagon closure list, while Portsmouth and Norfolk were added by the commission for consideration only last month. That explains the placards the Portsmouth workers were waving at the panel hearing in Boston in early June: THE NAVY KNOWS BEST. In other words, close Charleston.

As soon as Charleston saw the Pentagon's list, the city's political leaders and Chamber of Commerce launched a public relations counterattack. They raised $1 million to pay for a full-time staff and Washington-based lobbyists. In 18 days they rounded up 140,000 signatures on protest letters. The operation mobilized not only the shipyard's employees but also local businessmen from auto dealers to restaurateurs.

Adopting offense as a good defense, Charleston decided to go after the far larger Norfolk, arguing that the shrinking Navy and defense budget called for eliminating a facility with more dock space than the Charleston yard. "If you close Charleston or Portsmouth," says Elizabeth Inabinet, president of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, "you just don't take out enough capacity."

Charleston's best argument still is the closure's potential economic impact. Four other naval facilities in the city are also on the list and closing them all would, supporters claim, wipe out 27% of the area's jobs and 1 of every 3 payroll dollars in the region. In a gust of rhetoric that would make a soap- opera writer blush, Mayor Joe Riley Jr. says the city could begin to die "and the tumbleweeds of broken dreams and shattered lives blow down the street."

Like Portsmouth, the Norfolk shipyard was not on the Pentagon's original list and did not at first take its late addition very seriously. The yard was founded in 1767 and built the first U.S. battleship, the Texas, and the first U.S. aircraft carrier, the Langley. The yard employs 10,000 workers and has seven dry docks that can handle any ship in the Navy.

At a commission hearing two weeks ago, however, the Norfolk supporters got a shock. Though Norfolk is the only one of the three yards on the list that can overhaul aircraft carriers, commission members pointed out that a private firm, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., just down the road from Norfolk, would be willing and able to pick up that business. In fact, Newport News is short of work and earlier this month laid off 1,000 workers.

"Does it make sense," demanded Virginia Congressman Owen Pickett, "to close the only naval shipyard in a region that is the home port to 149 Navy ships, including five aircraft carriers?" In spite of the force of the argument, one member of the presidential commission said later, "If Norfolk or Portsmouth thinks we're not serious, they are kidding themselves." Courter, the commission chairman, told a press conference in Norfolk, "We're not here to terrorize the communities," but he added, "This is a very serious exercise."

The commissioners heard all the arguments again last week in Washington. After three months of hearings, they wound up with a marathon three-day session that featured speeches by 56 Senators and 153 Representatives, all eager to protect the bases in their districts. Then, finally, the commissioners listened to Defense Secretary Les Aspin and General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advised them firmly to stick to the Pentagon's plan for closures. "I believe my original recommendations are still correct," said Aspin.

It will not, in fact, be easy for the commission to change Aspin's hit list, which could be bad news for Charleston. The criteria to be applied are strict, beginning with the military value of the bases to be closed, going on to potential costs and savings and ending with the impact on local communities. The military services have supplied the commission with hundreds of pages of analysis and projections. Aspin says his base-closing plan will save $3.1 billion annually beginning in the year 2000, while eliminating 57,000 civilian jobs.

To add or subtract from the Pentagon's proposed list of 31 major bases, the commission must find "substantial deviation" from the Defense Department's calculations on the criteria. That is, the commission would have to show the Pentagon made major mistakes.

The commission's final report must be on the President's desk by July 1. He can kill it or send it on, in toto, to Congress, but he cannot pick it apart. Congress can accept it by taking no action, or reject it by resolution of both houses, a move subject to a presidential veto. Given the cutbacks in defense spending and the need to close down some bases, the pressure to approve the commission's final list is likely to be overwhelming.

"For every Congressman and Senator who is dismayed at having a base on the list," says Keith Cunningham, an analyst at Washington's nonprofit Business Executives for National Security, "there are many more who say, There but for the grace of God go I."

The final irony of the whole 1993 base-closing process, however, is that no matter who wins or loses this time around, more closures are inevitable. "Base closures," Aspin said, "have lagged behind the overall build- down." Future reductions in the military "will mean more, not fewer, base closures." As that prediction begins to come true in the next round of closings in 1995, the fight among the survivors to stay alive will be even fiercer.

With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston and Bruce van Voorst/Washington