Fort Wayne Journal Gazette August 9, 2005
Stakes high in Air Guard closure battle
By Sylvia A. Smith
WASHINGTON – Governors are suing the Pentagon. Military personnel are vowing they won’t re-up when their time in the National Guard expires. Lobbyists are piling up the billable hours. And if the cards fall right, Fort Wayne will gain 300 jobs and a multimillion-dollar boost in the economy.
The money, personnel and equipment involved in the Pentagon’s proposal to close or reconfigure about 54 Air National Guard bases make up a fraction of the changes recommended for the active-duty bases and other military facilities. But the reaction to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Air National Guard proposal is far louder and more strident than many of the other proposals for individual bases.
The National Guard Association said it supports Rumsfeld’s proposed changes in Army National Guard installations but opposes the Air National Guard recommendations. The group said the changes would “result in crippling and totally unacceptable changes to the very fabric of the Air National Guard.”
When Illinois’ attorney general sued last month to block the transfer of F-16s from Springfield’s Air National Guard unit to Fort Wayne’s, she said Rumsfeld’s proposal was against the law.
“Federal law could not be more clear: No National Guard base closures without the consent of the governor,” Lisa Madigan said. Pennsylvania has also sued, and governors of other states have said they’re considering a legal challenge.
Communities where active-duty bases are on the closure list protest, of course, said defense analyst John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private think tank. “But it’s not really a traveling circus the way the Guard issue is,” he said.
With a month before its recommendations must be submitted to the White House – which will then accept or reject the entire list before sending it to Congress, which also can accept or reject the list but not make changes – the civilian commission reviewing Rumsfeld’s proposals is awaiting an opinion from the attorney general on whether the Pentagon has the legal power to make sweeping changes to the Air National Guard bases.
Governors argue that the Constitution assigns control over the National Guard to them, not the federal government. Because of that, they contend, the Pentagon can’t legally close a National Guard base or significantly change its mission. Gov. Mitch Daniels has not joined in the protests.
“Governors are putting very significant speed bumps in this political process,” said P.J. Crowley, director of national defense and homeland security for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
A lawyer for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission backs up the governors’ contention that they, not the Pentagon, command the National Guard. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been asked for an opinion, but it has not yet been released.
Meanwhile, the commission has asked the Air Force, National Guard Bureau and the governors and their adjutants general to come up with a compromise. The commission has scheduled a hearing Thursday to discuss the issues. Merely saying all the recommendations regarding Air National Guard bases should be discarded – as the adjutants general said early in the process – is inadequate, commission chairman Anthony Principi said.
“To say that eliminating all of the secretary’s (of defense) recommendations regarding the Air National Guard is a solution would be irresponsible,” Principi said at a hearing last month before asking the groups to develop a compromise.
There’s friction among those groups, however, and Maj. Gen. Roger Lempke, the president of the Adjutants General Association, said there has been no meeting. He said when he testifies on Thursday, he will offer recommendations about how to resolve the situation.
He said the details are still being worked out, but the group is likely to argue that any transfers from one state to another – such as the F-16s from Springfield to Fort Wayne – should be aborted, but transfers within a state – such as the F-16s from Terre Haute to Fort Wayne – should be approved.
Analysts who are watching the process said the Pentagon isn’t likely to voluntarily propose a change in the original recommendations.
“The Air Force wants what they asked for,” said Christopher Hellman, a base-closing expert at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, a national security policy group.
Sentiment about local bases and concern that the changes in the bases forecast a diminished role of the Air National Guard are two major reasons that the reaction to closing or reconfiguring Air National Guard bases has been so emotional.
“Everyone’s proud to have an installation in their community or in their state, but the Guard has a different texture because it’s local,” Crowley said. “If you look at an active base … the majority of people on the base that are directly affected are not voting there. However, when you look at a Guard facility, a very significant number – if not everyone – affected directly by that decision is voting. Everyone along that chain, from the mayor to the governor to the congressional delegation looks much more closely at decisions that affect the Guard.”
Typical of the elected official angst over the proposed restructuring of bases is Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd.
Souder flew to St. Louis to testify at a BRAC hearing about the proposed changes in Indiana and Illinois. He’s met with the chairman of the commission. He wrangled an appointment with the Pentagon official overseeing the compilation of the list. He assigned a staff member to dogtail the process. He’s written 15 letters to the commissioners. His focus before the list was announced in May was trying to keep Fort Wayne off of it; when Rumsfeld proposed consolidating two other bases into the 122nd Fighter Wing, Souder reoriented his energy to fending off challenges from the communities that would lose jets and jobs to Fort Wayne.
Active-duty military personnel expect to be transferred from base to base. But because members of the National Guard have full-time jobs, don’t live on a military base and are often natives of their communities, their ties to a particular base – rather than the military – are significant.
A member of the 181st Fighter Wing in Terre Haute sent this e-mail to the BRAC Commission:
“I am a mid-level traditional NCO in aircraft maintenance. I will not re-enlist (in this unit or any other) if the unit is moved to Ft Wayne. The driving distance is too far and we will take up rank slots which will cause bad feelings.”
Crowley’s analysis of the Pentagon’s goal in proposing to consolidate Air National Guard bases is to save money by cutting the number of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to reduce the expense of flying and maintaining them. The Air Force wants to replace the F-15 and F-16 jets with F-22s but does not plan on a one-for-one replacement.
“To some extent, that has put the Air Guard and the Air Force on opposite sides of the equation,” he said. “The Air Force is lining itself to be the gainer, and the Air Guard is supposed to be the bill payer.”
Pike said it’s a wrong approach, because of all the military branches, the Air National Guard lends itself to the use of air power in modern times.
When the Air Force is used in war, he said, the Air Guard is seamlessly incorporated, and “no one ever questions the ability of the Guard and reserve to participate in that process. They fly just as well as anybody else. If we’re only going to use air power intermittently for brief periods of time, to me that sounds like a job for the Guard.”
There’s more at stake with how the Air National Guard issue is resolved than what happens with the jobs, jets and economic consequences of the changes at a few dozen bases. While it might sound like a good idea for the BRAC commission to avoid the legal questions raised by the suing governors by dropping consideration of any changes to any Air National Guard bases, Hellman said, there would be other consequences.
“One of the things that makes the BRAC process work is the idea that it’s win or lose,” Hellman said. “Once you start treating certain bases outside the normal BRAC process, other bases with constituencies are going to start asking for the same type of treatment. You’ll see the other Guard bases saying, ‘This shouldn’t just be an ANG issue; this should be a Guard issue.’ ”
The BRAC process – in which members of Congress and the president can’t add bases to the closure list or remove bases – was set up to remove the influences of politics from the decisions of how to reconfigure military installations.
“Once you start pulling at that, everybody with a base is going to stand up and go, ‘Hey wait a minute. Aren’t I a special case?’ ” Hellman said. “The process becomes untenable. It just won’t work.”
© Copyright 2005, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
