Published in the Carlisle Sentinel, by Natasha Lindstrom

August 6, 2013

The next time the Pentagon prepares to shutter a slew of bases, Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley wants to ensure Pennsylvania is ready to defend its military installations.

On Tuesday, Cawley toured the Defense Logistics Agency’s Distribution Center Susquehanna in New Cumberland, the largest such facility in the U.S. Department of Defense. The afternoon kicked off a series of visits Cawley plans to make to military bases throughout the state in coming months.

Cawley chairs the Military Community Protection Commission, a panel established by Gov. Tom Corbett last September to come up with strategies to enhance the state’s military bases and help advocate on their behalf at the federal level.

“We’re going to fight for our 12 bases in Pennsylvania, and we’re going to fight for the men and women, both military and civilian, who come to work at those bases because they deserve it,” Cawley said. “We are going to tell the story of Pennsylvania’s military position and how significant it is, not only for our state, but for our nation as well.”

The effort comes as the Pentagon grapples with massive budget problems, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stating Tuesday that his department faced day-to-day budget shortfalls of $11 billion even after sequestration cuts hit in March. Hagel announced a slight reprieve for workers, by reducing imposed furlough days from 11 to six, but emphasized the defense department’s “fiscal planning has been conducted under a cloud of uncertainty.”

This past spring Hagel signaled the department should look into another round of the Base Realignment and Closure program, a process known as BRAC that last occurred in 2005.

Efforts to advance another BRAC program by 2015 have effectively died amid congressional disapproval, but the military continues to face funding cuts that are already hitting bases around the country, said Tim Ford, president of the Association of Defense Communities. Recent furloughs to defense workers are just a small surface problem compared to concerns over potential civilian job layoffs and forced cuts long before bases actually consolidate or close down, he said.

“What we’re having occur now is what we kind of characterize as a ‘BRAC without a BRAC.’ We’re going through a significant downsizing in the military, and that means it’s having real impacts on installations,” Ford said. “The military services are having to make some very difficult decisions, and if they don’t have the ability to get rid of infrastructure they do not need, that just means they’re spending money on facilities that aren’t really benefitting our national security.”

The Department of Defense, by its own estimates, has about 20 percent excess capacity in its infrastructure.

“This ultimately is a national security issue and every dollar that we spend on excess facilities is a dollar taken from other military priorities,” said Todd Harrison, senior fellow in defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “It’s a dollar taken out of training, it’s a dollar taken out of advanced technologies. It’s basically a dollar taken out of our future military capabilities.”

But the last thing most politicians want is to scale back military infrastructure supporting their constituents.

“It’s easy to talk about eliminating waste and inefficiencies in government spending, except when that waste and efficiency benefits you,” Harrison said. “People are lining up to defend their local base and the jobs it creates in their community, but at the same time they’re electing people to Congress with the apparent mandate to cut spending. And at some point those things come into conflict.”

State and community leaders around the country should be working together to reduce the federal costs of running their bases, Ford said. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, for instance, recently signed an agreement with Midwest City to share jail services, so the local base no longer has to ship inmates 100 miles away. The Oklahoma base is also in negotiations about sharing local trash removal services.

Ford lauded Pennsylvania’s new commission as a “positive step.”

“They’re really focused on how to not just react to what’s happening, but be proactive on it, and not just protect bases but figure out how can they can position bases in Pennsylvania to succeed in the future, and I think that is what we like to see and it’s exciting to see Pennsylvania gearing its efforts back up,” Ford said.

Cawley touted the New Cumberland distribution center, which dates back to 1918, as a “national model” for increasing efficiency amid dwindling resources, such as through innovative thinking and smart capital investment.

“It’s a model that we could and should try to recreate throughout the country,” Cawley said.

The 7 million square-foot center employs some 3,800 workers, with the goods it assembles, stores and transports around the world ranging from clothing to medical sets to repair parts for weapons systems. In a typical month, the center averages 430 surface container shipments, 1,600 truckload shipments and 1,500 air pallet shipments, according to figures provided by Cawley’s office.

Phyllis Campbell, former director of operations at the New Cumberland center, and Rep. Mike Regan, R-92, joined Cawley at Tuesday’s news conference in the lobby of the facility. Media members were not permitted on the tour.

Harrison said the earliest that another round of military base realignments and closures will likely advance is 2016 — though that presents the added challenge of convincing congressional representatives to shut down bases during an election year.

(Natasha Lindstrom, "Cawley kicks off push to preserve Pa. military industry," Carlisle Sentinel, 08/06/13)