U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

i

40–814 2008

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–104]

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE 2005 DECISIONS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD

DECEMBER 12, 2007

(II)

READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas, Chairman

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam

MARK UDALL, Colorado

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma

NANCY BOYDA, Kansas

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona

KATHY CASTOR, Florida

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

TOM COLE, Oklahoma

ROB BISHOP, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado

DAVE SIENICKI, Professional Staff Member

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member

SARAH SCHAFFER, Staff Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2007

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, December 12, 2007, Implementation of the Base Realignment

and Closure 2005 Decisions ................................................................................. 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 ............................................................................. 77

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2007

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE 2005

DECISIONS

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member,

Readiness Subcommittee ..................................................................................... 2

Ortiz, Hon. Solomon P., a Representative from Texas, Chairman, Readiness

Subcommittee ....................................................................................................... 1

WITNESSES

Brown, Anthony G., Lt. Governor, State of Maryland .......................................... 49

Deegan, Dr. John F., Executive Director, Military Impacted Schools Association ........................................................................................................................ 53

Ferlise, Victor J., Esq., Former Deputy to the Commanding General for Operations, Support for the Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management

Command, Fort Monmouth, NJ .......................................................................... 55

Grone, Philip W., Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations and Environment) ................................................................................................................ 4

Houlemard, Michael A., Jr., President, Association of Defense Communities

and Executive Officer, Fort Ord Reuse Authority ............................................. 51

Lepore, Brian J., Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, U.S. Government Accountability Office ............................................................................. 7

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Brown, Anthony G. ........................................................................................... 120

Deegan, Dr. John F. ......................................................................................... 142

Ferlise, Victor J. ............................................................................................... 150

Grone, Philip W. ............................................................................................... 81

Houlemard, Michael A., Jr. .............................................................................. 131

Lepore, Brian J. ................................................................................................ 92

LoBiondo, Hon. Frank A., a Representative from New Jersey, Readiness

Subcommittee ................................................................................................ 170

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Article Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/5/07, 2 BRAC analysts

had Aberdeen ties, by Bill Bowman and Keith Brown Staff Writers ....... 197

Page

IV

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD—CONTINUED

Letter of nine New Jersey Legislators submitted by Tom Fitzsimmons ..... 201

Letter submitted by Hon. Joe Courtney, Member of Congress, a Representative from Connecticut ....................................................................... 204

Letter submitted by Justin Bernier, Acting Executive Director, Office

of Military Affairs, State of Connecticut ..................................................... 205

Written Statement of Hon. Rush Holt, Hon. Jim Saxton, Hon. Frank

Pallone and Hon. Chris Smith, Members of Congress ............................... 175

Written Statement of Jon S. Corzine, Governor of New Jersey ................... 190

Written Statement of Robert F. Giordano, Former Director of Research,

Development, and Engineering .................................................................... 181

Written Statement of Vice Adm. Paul G. Gaffney, II (Ret.), U.S. Navy ...... 178

Written Testimony on Behalf of American Federation of Government

Employees Local 1904, Located at Fort Monmouth, NJ submitted by

John R. Poitras .............................................................................................. 193

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Ms. Bordallo ...................................................................................................... 223

Mrs. Boyda ........................................................................................................ 223

Mr. Holt ............................................................................................................. 224

Mr. Loebsack ..................................................................................................... 223

Mr. Ortiz ........................................................................................................... 209

Mr. Reyes .......................................................................................................... 224

Mr. Rogers ......................................................................................................... 227

(1)

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BASE REALIGNMENT AND

CLOSURE 2005 DECISIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, December 12, 2007.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in room

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Solomon Ortiz (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. ORTIZ. Good morning. This subcommittee will come to order.

We want to welcome all of you to the first hearing that will look

critically at the way base closure decisions are being implemented

across the nation. The critical look is long overdue by the United

States Congress.

We are not doing anything today that could or would reverse the

2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) decisions, although I

wish we could do that. We are here to talk about the BRAC process

and to better understand how the Department is implementing the

BRAC’s 2005 decision.

The BRAC 2005 planning process, in my opinion, was flawed. It

did not obtain realistic data upon which to base sound business decisions, and it was tainted, again, in my personal opinion, by politics that were supposed to be removed by the authorizing legislation.

But most importantly, the 2005 BRAC round was carried out at

a time when base closure was a profoundly bad idea. We were and

at the same time were prosecuting a war on two fronts and unsure

of what infrastructure would be needed for involving homeland security needs.

At the end, the BRAC commission kept all their bases open and

closed newer bases that were specifically positioned for the defense

of our country. A prime example is Naval Station Ingleside in

south Texas. Naval Station Ingleside is a new base, 9 years old

now, with tremendous, extraordinary double-decker piers and

buildings and facilities located on the Gulf of Mexico with over

1,000 acres of land and a future to expand.

By closing Naval Station Pascagoula in Mississippi and Naval

Station Ingleside, the Nation will be left without a single naval

base on the entire Gulf Coast of Mexico. The gulf is a very strategic

trade corridor and our energy pipeline. And in the aftermath of

BRAC, it is now our soft underbelly.

2

To underscore that point, just days after BRAC ordered the closure of naval bases on the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Katrina blew

her deadly destruction straight into Pascagoula. It was assets from

Naval Station Pascagoula—wounded, but not down—and Naval

Station Ingleside that responded first and immediately, while East

Coast assets, steaming as quickly as they could, arrived several

days later.

So today we are focusing on a more limited agenda to review how

the Pentagon is implementing the BRAC law. I have always understood that costs are up and savings are down, but I had no idea

how much BRAC 2005 execution has changed since the BRAC commission completed its review.

After reading the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, I was initially pleased to see that, over 20 years, the Department expects to save something like $15 billion. However, I was

surprised to find that this is a 58 percent decrease from what

BRAC commission estimated.

Also, this committee was left to believe that BRAC was about reducing infrastructure, but we did not reduce any infrastructure in

2005. We just moved it to other locations. And I was equally concerned to learn that the Department hasn’t figured out how to implement some of its own BRAC recommendations.

Again, this subcommittee is not here today to overturn any decision already made. Communities with bases closing should continue planning, and communities with new bases assets coming

should continue to prepare for that event to happen when it is due.

We will look today only at how the Department of Defense (DOD)

is or is now complying with the law.

Before I move forward with the normal order of business, I wanted to welcome our new ranking member, Congressman Randy

Forbes. Randy, I am so happy that you are with us as a ranking

member. And he has been a valiant supporter of the military. He

has individually worked to ensure that servicemembers and their

families receive the training and support necessary to best complete their mission.

I look forward to working with you on improving the readiness

of our servicemembers. And now the chair recognizes my good

friend, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, Ranking Member Mr. Forbes, for any statement that he would like to make.

STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the chairman just to say that I am honored

to serve as his ranking member on this important and influential

subcommittee. There is no chairman with whom I would rather

serve than the honorable gentleman from Texas, who has a long

and distinguished record of leadership as both chairman and ranking member of the Readiness Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you.

Since we have two panels of witnesses and many members

present who wish to speak, I will keep my remarks brief. Even so,

I must say at the outset that I am disappointed at the great inVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
3

crease in costs associated with this BRAC round, and particularly

concerned about the lengthy payback period reported by the GAO

in its testimony.

I was one of 40 members who voted against BRAC when it was

first voted upon several years ago, and it is particularly disappointing because many of the concerns cited there and here today could

have been predicted and were predicted ahead of time. I wrote

about many of them in a USA Today op-ed as far back as July 30,

2001.

And I understand that the authors of the implementing legislation, suspicious of the fleeting nature of BRAC savings, deliberately

required that the Secretary of Defense certify that this 2005 BRAC

round would generate savings in six years in each military department as a prerequisite for conducting the round. In fact, the Secretary of Defense did certify that the Departments of the Army, the

Navy and the Air Force would be each into the black by 2011, not

2017, a full six years later, as reported today by the GAO.

Let me be clear that this subcommittee is quite concerned that

the department failed to achieve a legally required Secretary of Defense-certified objective by six years.

I understand that, in the conduct of the BRAC round, military

value, not cost, was the primary criterion prescribed by the implementing legislation. I realize that the costs of construction have increased dramatically due to worldwide competition for materials,

that the Army and Marine Corps are leveraging the BRAC process

to reset their forces, and that the whole department used the

BRAC round as a transformation enabler.

While I support these transformational efforts and the increases

in the Army and Marine Corps, it is still disappointing that more

savings will not be realized. Nonetheless, the BRAC process was

approved in 2005, and so this is a hearing on the implementation

of BRAC.

And as the chairman has emphasized, there is no intent to

change or undue the BRAC recommendations. The communities affected by BRAC deserve to know that Congress is committed to seeing the BRAC process through. The worst thing we could do would

be to change course in midstream. However, we should take this

opportunity to learn how to more effectively manage this process

in future rounds. According to the GAO, BRAC is still expected to

save $15 billion. Since the savings are coming late in the process,

we will be watching closely to be sure the much-touted military

value of this BRAC round materializes.

Mr. Grone’s testimony reinforces the complexity of executing this

round, which I can appreciate. Even today, the Army has not announced the final locations of additional brigade combat teams, the

Army’s major combat unit. Without that knowledge, military construction costs cannot be budgeted, nor can local communities accomplish the necessary planning for schools, roads and other amenities needed by an expanding population.

I want to once again thank the chairman for scheduling this

hearing and for selecting a broad cross-section of witnesses who

can address all important aspects of this process from the point of

view of the Department of Defense to both gaining and losing comVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
4

munities. And I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. And,

Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I yield back the balance my time.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.

I know that we have received a few inquiries from Members outside the subcommittee to address the witnesses. And after consultation with the minority, I now ask unanimous consent that

Members outside the House Armed Services Committee be authorized to question the panel members at today’s hearing. These Members will be recognized at the conclusion of questioning by the

members of the House Armed Services Committee.

No objection? We will just do that. Okay.

Now, today we have two panels of distinguished witnesses representing the Department of Defense, the Government Accountability Office, and other organizations that have been affected by

BRAC.

And without objection, the witnesses’ prepared testimony will be

accepted for the record.

On the first panel, we have the principal architect of the BRAC’s

2005 implementation process, Secretary Phil Grone, and the Government Accountability Office, Mr. Brian Lepore.

Secretary Grone, it is so good to see you. You and I have had a

great relationship. We appreciate the loyalty not only to the services, but to this country, and your outstanding work. And we have

known each other for a long time, and we are just happy that you

are here.

And I understand that you are leaving us. And I know that your

expertise and your experience will be missed, but I hope that we

can continue to consult with you.

Secretary GRONE. Yes, sir.

Mr. ORTIZ. We can begin by—Mr. Secretary, you can come up

with an opening statement. And just feel free to make your statement this morning. Good to see you, Phil.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP W. GRONE, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT)

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr.

Forbes, members of the subcommittee, other distinguished members of the House.

I am privileged to be here in my last week of service to the Department to discuss the 2005 round of base closure and realignment and the implementation thereof.

As the chairman and the ranking member have indicated, the

size of this round is extraordinary by any means compared to prior

rounds of base closure and realignment. This effort touches over

800 separate locations across the Nation, with 24 major closures,

24 major realignments, and 765 other actions.

Those decisions resulted from a laborious, legally mandated process that took us from 1,200 candidate recommendations within the

Department of Defense to 222 recommendations that the Secretary

ultimately made to the independent commission.

The commission then, considering all evidence before it, both provided by the Department and provided in field hearings and other

sources of information, which the Department did not have access

or could not provide under the terms of the statute, made changes

5

to the Department’s recommendations, supported, in the case of—

35 percent of the department’s recommendations were changed in

some way, large or small, by the commission, which is a greater

change rate than in all prior rounds of BRAC combined, where the

change rate was 15 percent.

So the commission very actively considered the Department’s recommendations, considered all of the evidence, and made a significant number of changes.

Forty percent of what resulted from that process resulted from

the Joint Cross-Service Group process, including some of the recommendations that are of interest to Members in this room today.

The Department had been criticized over four rounds of base closure and realignment for things that we did not do.

The Department was criticized for its inability to adequately get

at joint processes and joint arrangements. And as part of that process, the criticism, including from some of the criticism from our

friends in the Government Accountability Office, was that those efforts were too narrow.

The Department responded to those criticisms by doing two

things. First, it created Joint Cross-Service Groups with broad

mandates. Rather than looking merely at military medical treatment facilities, we looked at the medical functions of the department broadly.

Rather than looking merely at depots, we looked at industrial capability. Rather than merely looking at laboratories, we looked at

technical capability, as well as examining other what we called

back-office functions, headquarters and support activities among

them, that had never been addressed on a joint cross-service basis

before.

And we gave those groups real authority to make recommendations to the senior leadership. These were not Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD)-mandated requirements. They were jointly

arrived at decisions that worked their way through the senior leadership, exercising their military judgment based on the data and

the strategies that were available at the time.

I understand the comments made by my friend that I have

worked with so many years, the chairman, gentleman from Texas,

on the complexity of this managing BRAC in the context of the

global war on terror and broader force transformation.

But as the Secretary said at the time and as the Administration

continued to assert, this was precisely the time and the moment for

us to re-look at the national military infrastructure because of the

nature of the missions that we are being asked to undertake and

the nature of force transformation ongoing within the Department

of Defense.

The Army is the principal exemplar of that. The Army is currently involved in the broadest force transformation, broadest reset,

most complex installations transformation since 1942.

Our ability to establish maneuver centers of excellence, fires centers of excellence, and other things that are necessary to support

the force, even in advance of decisions to grow the Army, could not

have been accomplished without a Base Realignment and Closure

round. And in that sense, they were necessary to the mission of

today and the mission of tomorrow.

6

I am also very sensitive to the questions of the increasing costs

that have appeared in the round. As we extensively discussed with

all four oversight subcommittees earlier this year, the budget justification documents in February provided the detail for the increases in those costs.

As I said then and I will say again today, those costs basically fell into three broad baskets: $2 billion of the $8 billion, $8 billionplus of increase is derived from taking then-year dollars that the

Cost of Base Realignment Actions (COBRA) model provided and

putting it into an implementation plan over a six-year spread. Natural inflation causes $2 billion of increase.

An additional $2 billion was caused by other changes that resulted from site survey work. At certain locations, Fort Knox being

among them for the human resources center of excellence, when we

actually got people on the ground beyond COBRA to do siting work,

the notion of renovating disconnected facilities with a very sparse

Information Technology (IT) backbone and infrastructure was very

difficult, so we substituted new construction for mere renovation to

give us the transformational capability that the recommendation

intended.

And $4 billion, nearly half, approximately half of the increase,

was due to an Army package of enhancements that was brought

forward in that particular program review. Some of those items

were items that had been omitted in earlier parts of the planning;

some of them were enhancements for additional training ranges at

places like Fort Benning; and others were enhancements for quality of life.

Some of those may serve a dual purpose. Some of those may support parts of the force beyond the question of BRAC. But all of

them support aspects of the BRAC realignment. And the decision

of the leadership was to provide full cost visibility on all aspects

directly and materially affected by BRAC. And they were included

in the package.

The question of savings is an important one. We and the Government Accountability Office have had a longstanding disagreement

on the question on personnel savings and what they mean, in

terms of savings in this process. Our view is that, to the extent

that you are realigning manpower and forces or taking force structure out, that is the cleanest.

But to the extent that you are avoiding having to pay for additional recruitment of military or civilian personnel or contractors in

an inefficiently aligned system, those cost avoidances need to be

counted as savings, and we have.

Even after implementation, we are still expecting $4 billion in

annual recurring savings on an annual basis beginning in 2012.

Implementation is complex. And one of the ways in which this committee and this Congress can help us in implementation is by addressing what has been one of the more disruptive aspects of implementation than in any prior round of BRAC.

We are now in the 27th month of implementation. Fourteen of

those 27 months have been constricted, constrained in some way by

the inability of the Department to either access funds, through notice and wait or other limiting provisions, or through the inability

to have full appropriation as requested by the President.

7

For the last two years, we have been operating under continuing

resolutions which have affected the management of this account.

The budget request for the current fiscal year to implement the

round—we are in a third of six years of implementation—is $8.2

billion. We are operating in the continuing resolution environment

that gives us a piece of last year’s appropriation of $5.6 billion.

The department cannot effectively implement the round unless it

has access to the resources that are necessary to implement it. So,

Mr. Chairman, we urge you—and we have always had your strong

support and the support of the gentleman from Virginia and others—to work with us and with the Appropriations Committee to

ensure that we can access the funds that are necessary to implement the round.

I know there is always a question of whether or not we can make

their legally mandated deadline of September 15, 2011. I am not

yet prepared to concede that that is not achievable, but time is rapidly working against us, and our inability to secure the necessary

funds works against us.

Oversight is important. The dialogue with the committees has

been very, very critical to us in helping shape aspects of the implementation plan. But our ability to work together and our ability to

complete the mission on time—for the good of the Army, the good

of the forces, the good of the department, good of the country—is

dependent on our ability to effectively implement in a timely way.

And for that, we urgently need your support.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Grone can be found in the

Appendix on page 81.]

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. As always, you have always been very eloquent, and we certainly appreciate your testimony this morning.

And now we will go to Mr. Lepore. Thank you so much, sir, for

joining with us. And you can begin with your testimony, sir.

STATEMENT OF BRIAN J. LEPORE, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. LEPORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the subcommittee, and invited Members, I am delighted to be here today to testify on implementation

of BRAC 2005. This is the largest, most complex, and costliest

BRAC ever. Unlike previous rounds, the Secretary of Defense saw

this round as an opportunity to transform DOD, promote jointness,

and save money. Thus, BRAC 2005 focuses more on business process reengineering and base realignments, rather than closures.

Today in my testimony, I will address GAO’s role in BRAC and

how the estimated costs and savings have changed since 2005. My

testimony is based on our reviews of DOD’s process for developing

its recommendations and our reports on its implementation.

Now I will turn to my first topic: our role in BRAC. We were required by law to monitor the process that DOD uses and did use

in developing its recommendations. We issued our report on July

1, 2005, and concluded that DOD’s process was generally logical,

reasoned, and well-documented, but we also raised an important

8

caution. That is the extent to which DOD achieved the savings it

estimated was uncertain because of, one, the way in which military

personnel reductions are counted; and, two, the fact that many of

the recommendations focused on business process reengineering on

transformation and, as a result, many of the savings were not validated and much would depend on how the recommendations were

implemented.

We also pointed out that DOD and the commission used the cost

of base realignment actions, or COBRA model, to evaluate the recommendations. But we reported in both 1995 and in 2005 that,

while COBRA is a useful tool for developing data to compare

against candidate recommendations, it is not intended to and consequently does not produce budget-quality numbers.

Thus, DOD’s budget request is likely to be different than the

COBRA numbers. Once the recommendations become binding, we

evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of implementation just as

we do other Federal programs, which brings me to my second topic.

Yesterday, we issued our latest report on BRAC implementation

and concluded that the costs have gone up from the 2005 commission estimates of about $21 billion to the President’s fiscal year

2008 budget submission number of about $31 billion.

Here is why: Construction and operations and maintenance is expected to be higher. In addition, inflation and environmental restoration costs are not included in COBRA but, in fact, are included,

of course, in the President’s budget submission.

Conversely, net annual recurring savings are likely to be lower.

In 2005, the commission projected net annual recurring savings of

about $4.2 billion. As you know, it is now about $4 billion. DOD

attributes much of the savings to no longer operating closed bases

and from military personnel reductions.

These reductions generally consist of disestablishing organizations and transferring military personnel from one location to another, but maintaining the current end strength. So DOD still pays

the salary and benefits while also claiming this as a savings.

We do not believe this generates funds that can be spent on

other defense priorities, since the individuals are still getting paid.

Without these savings, projected net annual recurring savings falls

to about $2.2 billion, still substantial.

This is a longstanding point of disagreement between us and

DOD, as Secretary Grone indicated. We talked about it in 1995; we

talked about it in 2005. But we also felt that the Congress would

not have adequate transparency over the savings estimated from

BRAC. That is why yesterday we recommended that DOD explain

its savings from personnel reductions versus other savings, and

DOD agreed.

One other measure for evaluating BRAC is 20-year net present

value, which calculates the future value of costs and savings from

BRAC. The overall payback period is expected to be less than 20

years, but the number of recommendations that do not pay back in

20 years has increased from 30 in the commission’s 2005 report to

73, based on estimates in DOD’s fiscal year 2008 budget submission.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we are to monitor BRAC implementation

and report annually with a post-implementation report within one

9

year of the end of implementation. We look forward to continuing

to assist you in evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of the

implementation of BRAC 2005.

This concludes my prepared statement, and I would be happy to

answer any questions that you or the other members may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lepore can be found in the Appendix on page 92.]

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much for your testimony. And this is

exactly what we need, a check-and-balance system, so that we as

Members of Congress can do what is right now.

I am going to start with a question, and I am going to—we have

many Members who are with us today. And I am going to be sure

that we allow them to ask questions this morning. As soon as all

the Members of the committee have asked questions, we will allow

them to do that.

Mr. Grone, and I know you do support a compliance of the BRAC

recommendations. And as to Naval Station Ingleside closure recommendations, I have become aware that the Department would

like to bend the interpretation and place barracks and other supporting facilities at other locations besides Naval Station San

Diego.

And I was just wondering, will you support something like that?

And I know that your days are short here. But sometimes, you

know, they come and propose to us with a Plan A, and then somebody comes to us and presents a Plan B, and then we see that they

are carrying out Plan C. This is why there is a little confusion, and

maybe you can enlighten me on what we are hearing from several

sides on this issue.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Chairman, I will do the best I can. It is

a question that affects most directly the Navy.

The ships that are part of the recommendation will realign directly to the intended location, Naval Station San Diego, pursuant

to the recommendation. I know there had been some discussion

about whether or not those ships might relocate to another location

in the vicinity of San Diego.

There is no touch-and-go provision; there is no other appropriate

provision for implementing the recommendation. Those ships will

be at Naval Station San Diego.

The support facilities—and as the BRAC process was moving

along, the Navy was also further enhancing its regionalization concept. The Navy has a number of assets at Point Loma, very near

Naval Station San Diego, that support various aspects of the fleet

throughout the region.

It is perfectly within the understanding of the recommendation,

as well as the management of manpower building for the Navy, to

have queues, quarters in the Point Loma area. They are a part of

Naval Station San Diego from a management perspective. They do

not need to be directly at the ship.

So we have some flexibility, in terms of the best siting for quarters. But the stationing of the ships and their operational employment will be out of Naval Station San Diego.

Mr. ORTIZ. But, you know, I attended most of the BRAC hearings, and I never heard that they would be moving some place else.

The testimony was always that they were moving to San Diego,

10

and that they had also fishing facilities, and that that had everything.

And all of a sudden, they said, ‘‘No, we don’t have facilities. We

are going to have to probably build facilities.’’ And what I am trying to get to is, you don’t think that the base closure commission

was misled when they said that they were moving to San Diego,

and that they were going to be there, and that the facilities were

ready, and they have adequate facilities and adequate berthing?

Secretary GRONE. I would have to go back and look at the specific testimony of what was meant by facilities, whether that was

for the direct support of the ships or whether that was also in support of personnel and where they would be quartered.

But the issue has been looked at with the Office of General

Counsel in light of the record, and I am confident that as the Navy

has designed the program is legally sufficient.

Mr. ORTIZ. I wish I knew who was going to replace you. Do you

know who is going to replace you?

Secretary GRONE. That announcement has not been made yet,

sir.

Mr. ORTIZ. And this is the concern, of course, when we are being

told one thing and DOD does something else. And this concerns us.

And this is why I am very, very interested.

You know, one of the things that we have been trying to get from

the Navy is their implementation program. We have been asking

the Navy to give us a copy as to how they are going to make their

plan work, their implementation. And up to this date, we haven’t

received anything.

Do you think that, before you leave, you might be able to help

us get the Navy to give us this plan?

Secretary GRONE. I don’t see any obvious reason why the Navy

couldn’t detail how the plan would be implemented to members.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 209.]

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, and I have a lot of other questions that

I would like to ask, but I want to be fair to all the Members who

have an interest in this hearing today. So I am going to cut it

short, and then I will come back with some other questions.

Now, I would like to yield to my good friend, Mr. Forbes.

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, will be brief so we

can get as many questions in as possible.

Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here and for your service. And

I just have two questions for you.

The first one is, we know military value is so important, and we

know that, you know, one of the key things for the BRAC process

is making sure about the readiness of our troops. And the question

I would ask you this morning, is the BRAC process negatively impacting our soldiers’ operational readiness or ability to prosecute

the global war on terror, in your opinion?

Secretary GRONE. In my opinion, no.

Mr. FORBES. Okay, second question is this. One of the concerns

to those of us on the committee is whether the Army can meet the

September 2011 statutory deadline, and you talked about that, too.

In fact, I have checked in with the base in my district affected by

BRAC, which is Fort Lee, and see how they are doing.

11

Now, they asked them, ‘‘Can you do it? Can you complete the

construction on time?’’ And they said, ‘‘Absolutely, if we get the

money.’’ And then the question comes back to something you alluded to a little bit, and that is, can you explain to us on the committee the impact, if any, the delay in funding for fiscal year 2007,

which I believe arrived just this past May, had to the schedule and

cost of your construction plans?

And can you also address the process as it relates to the fiscal

year 2008 Military Construction (MILCON) bill that still hasn’t

passed yet?

Secretary GRONE. Well, sir, it is difficult to say with specificity

what any particular delay in funding means, in terms of the cost

of a given project at a given location. What I can tell you is how

we go about managing those delays or the partial funding that we

receive.

One of the difficulties inside the department—I mean, in a complex management exercise like this—is the amount of time it takes

with the components to realign how the plans are going to be done,

because as we present the President’s budget, there is an assumption of how the year will execute.

Now, those execution plans can always change in implementation, but when we have partial funding and are uncertain as to

when funding will come—the first two years of implementation

were a bit easier. We could generally on a pro rata basis apportion

those funds, and the components could execute what they could.

As we are approaching this year, the third year, we are finding

that a little bit more difficult to just do the peanut butter spread

across the enterprise. So we are having to make discrete choices

about what missions are to be or should be more effectively protected or enhanced in the distribution of limited funds. And that

is causing, certainly, some things to slip to the right.

And our hope is that we can get the full funding and then bring

that program back, but it causes us to have to continue to adjust

and readjust the program, and that provides for a lack of surety

at the base level, and it does, to some degree, affect our ability to

effectively engage with communities about when certain things are

going to happen.

That particularly is difficult when we are dealing with not just

receiver sites in BRAC, but any site that it might also be affected

be Army modularity or other initiatives. The inability to sort of be

precise with regard to schedule makes it harder to work with communities to accommodate that growth in time.

So we are looking at the question of costs very carefully. I want

to try to have a better way of demonstrating how things are going

to happen. But unless we already have a contract out that we then

can’t award, and then we have to go to an award later, it is going

to be hard on a specific basis to say what that change order would

be.

Mr. FORBES. And thank you.

Mr. Lepore, just a quick question for you. And if you can answer

today, fine. If you need to submit it in writing, that is okay. But

I know your report indicates an increase of about $10 billion in the

BRAC implementation, and it indicates about $7 billion of that, as

12

I understand, military construction, about $3 billion that stems

from inflation, environmental cleanup, and other factors.

And can you describe for us which of those costs you believe

could have been accounted for ahead of time or in the assessment

process? And it may be more generically—now with greater transparency in the BRAC implementation, costs have increased. In retrospect, should the BRAC process have built in additional methods

to increase cost accuracy?

Mr. LEPORE. One of the challenges that the Department has, I

think, in producing those numbers is they are, in effect, a forecast.

What DOD is trying to do is to look forward over the 6-year implementation period and try to determine, what will I need to do,

what will DOD need to do to implement, in this case, 182 recommendations, over 800 individual BRAC actions, to implement

those recommendations? So the challenge is an important one and

I think should not be missed.

The COBRA model does not account for inflation. It works with

standards and averages. It uses constant dollars. And as a result,

by definition, inflation is not built in.

The reason in our report we compared the 2005 dollars with the

2008 dollars and actually presents the inflation, if you will, is that

the Congress ultimately appropriates in current dollars, not constant dollars, and DOD requests funds in current dollars and not

constant dollars.

So certainly the question, is there something that could have

been foreseen? Certainly, inflation was a factor. Estimating how

much it is, is certainly particularly challenging.

And the other point I would make is that the COBRA model also

does not include environmental restoration costs by design. And the

theory behind that is that cleaning up environmental contamination on an installation is a liability to DOD, regardless of whether

a base is to be closed or not, to protect human life, health and safety. And so those two items—in this case, totaling on the order of

$3.5 billion, were not included in COBRA and were not designed

to be included.

And so one can certainly recognize it is not there, but one would

have to estimate how much that is going to be over the six-year period.

Mr. FORBES. Thank you both.

Mr. Chairman, thank you. I yield back.

Mr. ORTIZ. We will try our best to stay within the five-minute

rule, because we have a lot of Members, and we want to be fair to

give everybody an opportunity to ask a question. And so be sure

that you stay within the five minutes.

And now let me yield to my good friend, Ms. Boyda.

Mrs. BOYDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have the honor—I am Nancy Boyda from Kansas. I have the

honor and the responsibility of representing Fort Leavenworth,

Fort Riley, Parsons Army Ammunition Plant, which is big, so I

have three points that I would like to—if I can’t get an answer, I

would like to get on the record that are deeply, deeply concerning

to us.

Clearly, the two combat brigade teams that are going to stay in

Europe, one of those was scheduled to come back, a heavy brigade

13

team coming back to Fort Riley. How do you intend to comply with

the BRAC and keep those there? Is it temporary? Can you just expand on—give us the information there?

Secretary GRONE. Ma’am, I will. I know some of these questions

arise from some reports that appeared in the New York Times. And

there is a good deal about that article that was incorrect.

The incorrect part starts with the Secretary has not yet made a

decision on that question and it is a matter still under consideration by the senior leadership.

The other aspect of the story that got maybe a little garbled is

that words like ‘‘defer’’ and ‘‘delay’’ create the opportunity for misinterpretation, because individuals like yourself understandably attach that to the units that are there now.

The issue is, and before the leadership, is whether or not there

would be an American military presence larger than was previously

contemplated in those locations for a longer, slightly longer period

of time than was otherwise in the original plan.

A question of whether 1st Armor Division (AD), 1st Infantry Division (ID) come back to the United States and the capabilities represented by 1 AD and 1 ID by the statutory deadline is not at

issue. The department will comply with its obligations under BRAC

for that capability to be in place by the deadline.

Mrs. BOYDA. All right, thank you very much.

The Parsons Army Ammunition Plant, which was one of the closing sites, I had a question about equipment that is left there. We

have been having several conversations with your shop about the

equipment. And their question is, what savings are we trying to realize by not moving equipment around and storing it? What savings—are we looking at what we can save, our BRAC dollars, and

use them for something else, if equipment is merely going to be

moved and stored to just leave it? Do you have any thoughts that

you could share with us on that?

Secretary GRONE. That is an implementation detail that I am not

that close to, as it is an Army action.

Mrs. BOYDA. Do you understand basically the purpose—it is very

difficult——

Secretary GRONE. I do.

Mrs. BOYDA [continuing]. To see why we are sending very

limited——

Secretary GRONE. I do.

Mrs. BOYDA [continuing]. Precious dollars. And it is very difficult

to see what actual benefit is coming from that.

Secretary GRONE. What I would like to do is take that back, and

in light of not just written for the record, but in light of my departure on Friday, I will try to come back to you with an answer before the end of the day on Friday, if I can.

Mrs. BOYDA. Thank you so much. It would mean a great deal.

Secretary GRONE. And if I can’t, I will tell you why not and who

is going to get back to you, if I could.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 223.]

Mrs. BOYDA. The third question has to do with commissaries and

appropriated funds versus the nonappropriated funds and having

14

the site. Do you have any—and, again, are you familiar with that

issue, if I could shortcut the——

Secretary GRONE. In a generic way, in terms of whether items

that we——

Mrs. BOYDA. Yes, with BRAC, we are being asked to provide

funds from the users for commissaries when, in fact, this is really—we are building a commissary because of the increased—because we were a gaining facility.

Secretary GRONE. So to make sure that I understand you, it is

that the question of whether or not MILCON, BRAC or the surcharge ought to fund the requirement.

Mrs. BOYDA. Yes. And obviously the surcharge is the least desirable of those.

Secretary GRONE. That is understood. This has been a subject of

some correspondence and discussion between Members in both

chambers with my colleagues and the undersecretary for personnel

and readiness, as they run the lion’s share of those programs.

The——

Mrs. BOYDA. Well, let me just say, as my time is going, let me

say for the record that clearly that surcharge is by far the least

preferable.

Secretary GRONE. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BOYDA. You know, the need for these extra facilities results

from our—and we are very happy in Kansas to have these extra

brigades there.

Secretary GRONE. What my colleagues in Personnel and Readiness (PNR) are doing right now is looking very clearly at those various requirements and bending them, what ought to be MILCON,

what ought to be surcharged, what ought to be attached to BRAC

as a result of BRAC actions. And then they will come back to the

Congress with, I assume, all the necessary proposals in that regard

and will do what is necessary to support those quality of life facilities.

Mrs. BOYDA. Okay, thank you so much. And good luck in your

new life.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, ma’am.

Mrs. BOYDA. Thank you.

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Rogers.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think my questions will be like most people’s questions today,

parochial. I have Fort Benning, which straddles the Georgia-Alabama line, as you know. And I am wondering if you can tell me

how many soldiers are going to be relocated to Fort Benning as a

part of BRAC?

Secretary GRONE. Sir, the last information I had from the Army

on that was just shy of 1,000 permanent party.

Mr. ROGERS. How many families, total individuals?

Secretary GRONE. I don’t have a specific number of families.

What I have is what I think are the number of students that may

be there longer than three months, under three months. And the

military students staying at Benning longer than 3 months, I have

it just nearly 1,200 students.

15

I could try to break that back down to how many personnel with

family, but I don’t know that we specifically know that yet until

we get through all the Permanent Change of Station (PCS) process.

Mr. ROGERS. But the figure I have heard——

Secretary GRONE [continuing]. Right now for how many students.

Mr. ROGERS. And the figure that I have heard from the military

is they are expecting a total of 35,000 people to be coming to the

Benning area, both on-post and off-post, as a result of this BRAC.

Secretary GRONE. Well, that may be. There are a combination of

factors there. One is the military and civilian personnel and their

family members, the estimates right now are somewhere around

13,000 folks. Layered into that, particularly from a local perspective as you are trying to do planning, are people trying to do estimates for what kind of contractor support base might also come

with that.

And so the Army will make representations as to the personnel

that they control, military and civilian personnel and related family members, and then there will be a larger discussion about the

contractor base. And that is occasionally where we have some folks

occasionally maybe talking past each other, not willfully, but just

understanding the base line is important.

Mr. ROGERS. Well, my understanding is Benning is one of eight

facilities around the country that is going to experience dramatic

growth as a result of the relocating of missions in the BRAC. And

they have the same concerns I think that the other seven communities have, and that is, how do we absorb from an infrastructure

standpoint off-post these new folks, in schools, in hospitals?

The superintendents of the school systems on both the Georgia

side and the Alabama side have talked with me about if there is

going to be any one-time funding to help them expand their facilities to accommodate the new students.

Can you tell me if you have any plans to do that in any of these

communities?

Secretary GRONE. Well, the department traditionally has not provided appropriated funds for that purpose beyond the Department

of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) school system. We are

working—we have provided planning grants to communities and

the states, local education authorities.

There are discussions ongoing about how to think about the Impact Aid question, maybe in a different form. That is very preliminary. No decisions are made. But we don’t have a program, other

than some programs that the Department of Education has, grant

programs that provide brick-and-mortar construction.

This week in St. Louis, we have the Office of Economic Adjustment with the Federal interagency, agencies represented under the

Economic Adjustment Committee, which I chair in the interagency

on behalf of the Secretary, are meeting with the growth communities. And a principal part of that discussion is education. There

is also a track on transportation and other associated infrastructure issues, as we all continue to work together to have the infrastructure in the communities where we are going to have growth

be able to support that as it comes online.

Mr. ROGERS. Well, I know that, in previous BRAC, when we lost

Fort McClellan in my congressional district, it had a huge economic

16

impact on the district. But to their credit, the Army was very helpful in helping that community transition. I think that there should

be a little bit more sensitivity to these communities who are going

to have to absorb all these new people.

And I would like to know, do you have an individual in your office that these local officials can make contact with, talk about

their concerns?

Secretary GRONE. The director of the Office of Economic Adjustment, Mr. Patrick O’Brien, is the principal leader on that from an

economic adjustment perspective. We have a team of folks. I know

some of those folks are working with folks in the Fort Benning

area.

I know he would be pleased to come up and have a conversation

about issues that are of concern to you.

Mr. ROGERS. Great. I would like to do that.

Secretary GRONE. It is a pretty important part of what we do

from a planning perspective.

Mr. ROGERS. And my last question is, do you know the timeline

for the Armor Center moving to Benning from Fort Knox?

Secretary GRONE. I am sorry, sir?

Mr. ROGERS. Do you know what the timeline is for the Armor

Center to move from Fort Knox to Benning?

Secretary GRONE. I don’t have that specifically in front of me

today, but I can get that to you this afternoon. That is not a——

Mr. ROGERS. I would appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary GRONE. That is a short question and answer.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 227.]

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is probably unfair to ask you about every single change in the

2005 BRAC law. And if it would be okay, there is a couple Connecticut-specific items which we will just submit in writing, and

any help your office can give in terms of some questions we have

about implementation.

And the only question I really wanted to ask about was just the

consolidation of the Reserve Centers, which, again, GAO looked at

that issue and determined that the costs are higher, the savings

are less, but nonetheless it still seems like a good plan, something

that I know the guard and reserve units in New England, at least,

are very excited about.

But there does seem to be implementation problems in terms of

just, again, the costs that this is going to result in and also some

of the siting that the statute specifically mandated. Newtown, Connecticut, was identified as a place where there is a Reserve Center

that would be built. Unfortunately, there does not appear, because

Newtown, Connecticut, is pretty good real estate, a location where

this can happen.

And I guess GAO stated that there needs to be sort of a better

system for stakeholders to really understand how this is all going

to sort of place itself out. And we are seeing that in Connecticut,

is that there is a lot of confusion, again, from people who don’t—

who support the concept and want to see it happen. And I am just

wondering whether that is something that is happening across the

17

country, whether or not the Department of Defense is trying to

come up with a strategy to help implement whether it is a good

idea.

Secretary GRONE. Well, sir, I appreciate your comments there,

because the effort to—particularly for the Army, for this to be a

total force BRAC process and to do those consolidations, is critically

important to the future of the reserve components and their role

with the active force as part of the total force to execute the mission.

The adjutants general were very deeply involved in that process.

They will continue to be deeply involved in that process. I am a bit

concerned that you say that there may be some issues of stakeholders in the state of Connecticut that may need some addressing, and

I am happy to go back, and talk to the Army about that, and have

some folks come talk to you about that, because I think it is important to keep that all on track.

The question that is not the implementation challenge in relation

to cost—and it is a point I want to stress again—is that when we

brought the fiscal year 2006 budget to Congress, there were concerns—or 2007 budget to Congress—there were concerns that

whether or not we were going to fully fund the program.

And the questions at the time were, ‘‘We know the program is

not fully loaded, in terms of the funds against the requirements.

How can you assure us that every action will be undertaken?’’

The commitment of the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary was

that, after we went through all the implementation planning, we

would have a fully funded program. And that is the program we

brought forward this year. So the reserve force component transformation pieces are fully funded in the program.

Issues of implementation planning and some of those specific details about a specific reference to a specific town, which may not

have an available real estate asset, is one we are going to have to

continue to work through. There are a limited number of those

across the country, but there are ones we are going to have to continue to work very hard, because the Reserve Center transformation is a critically important part of the total force concept.

So I would like to have some folks with the Army come talk to

you about that to make sure that we have got the right people talking to each other in this process to make that go as smoothly as

possible.

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, when you say that the program is fully

loaded, is this including the quality of life facilities, as well?

Secretary GRONE. The quality of life? What kind of quality of life

facilities, because we have—in terms of—I am not quite sure what

we are talking about.

Mr. ORTIZ. See, when we talk about quality of life, we go from

health facilities, Post Exchanges (PXs), Naval Exchanges, all that

kind of stuff.

Secretary GRONE. I mean, some of the major additions, particu- larly to the Army package, the $4 billion package, was in the quality of life arena. In answer to the question of the gentlelady from

Kansas, I suggested that there are some aspects of the commissary

and exchange system and some of the things that would be funded,

either MILCON, BRAC or through the surcharge, that needed to

18

be looked at, because there was apparently some uncertainty within the system about where these go.

As those requirements are identified and specified for what ought

to fund them, then they will be funded in that way. And if we

make an adjustment in the next budget request to accommodate

those that are BRAC-specific, we will make that adjustment.

But every requirement that we know today that is a quality of

life requirement, pertinent to the BRAC recommendations that

have been identified by the services, and they are part of the program.

The full funding requirements that the Secretary and the Deputy

Secretary made one year-plus ago pertain not just to that program,

but to the program and to the process. There will be requirements

that come off the table for things that are no longer required, just

as, as we do some further planning and examination, there may be

a BRAC-related child development center or a commissary that

may be needed. And that may come into the program.

But based on the requirements we know today that are specific

to BRAC, they are in the program. And then, as I indicated, my

colleagues in personnel and readiness are looking at that very

question, particularly on the commissary and exchange system, to

understand which of the three lanes those ought to be funded in.

And I would expect we would make the appropriate adjustment at

that time.

Mr. ORTIZ. I would like, before I move to Mr. McHugh from New

York, do you agree with that statement?

Mr. LEPORE. As you know, Mr. Chairman, we took a look in our

report that we call the Growth Bases Report at the preparedness

of the installations that were growing, such as Fort Benning, to accommodate everybody coming in.

That report was broader than BRAC. It did talk about BRAC,

but it also was discussing Army modularity, the establishment of

the brigade combat teams, to a lesser extent, growth of force could

be involved that, as well.

And the point we were making in that report, which is what I

believe you are asking me about, was, what it clear to the local installation commander at the installations that we visited, that all

of the childcare and other quality of life kinds of facilities would

be there when the forces arrived? And there was some concern that

some may be there, some may not be.

But it is important to note that that report talked about more

than BRAC. And I believe Secretary Grone’s comment dealt with

BRAC specific.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.

Mr. McHugh.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by adding my words of congratulations to our new

ranking member. I know, Mr. Chairman, you and he will work very

well together, and I certainly look forward to working with our new

leader.

Also, to Secretary Grone, Phil, best wishes to you in the future.

You still have many, many friends here, more than most of us have

on this panel. So I wish you all the best, and we appreciate all the

great service that you provided this committee and, of course, in reVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
19

cent years to the Department and to the men and women in uniform.

Having said that, I want to make sure—I have heard your dialogue with Ms. Boyda. I just heard the exchange with the chairman. And that was really going to be the one area of inquiry that

I had.

More generically, we have got a pattern through nonappropriated

fund projects that is disconcerting to me and concerning, as well.

And as you look at years 2005 through 2008, when you have got

commissary and Navy construction requests that total about $2.2

billion, $929 million of those dollars, or over 40 percent, resulted

because DOD requested waivers to allow Navy funding, nonappropriated funding, to be used to pay for projects that, by stated

DOD policy, ought to be built with appropriated funds.

We all understand there comes a time when waivers are required, when you have projects that are unable to be accounted for

in an appropriate way. In fact, that is the quote from the DOD policy from time to time. But over 40 percent is a pretty big number

through a three-year period.

And as we look at 2008, of the total funds that you have requested, we are really concerned again about this use of waiver,

particularly in the BRAC and the re-stationing accounts, because

those are projects that, by policy—and I heard you say that your

personnel folks are looking at it, but we have looked at it—and, by

policy, certainly should not be Navy funding. I guess we can talk

about other possible ways, but shouldn’t be Navy funding, except

on time-to-time basis.

So I wanted to weigh in my two cents’ worth. I don’t know if you

want to respond to my comments any differently than you did in

the dialogue that you had with my two colleagues. But this is a

concern, and I don’t need to lecture you or even discuss with you,

because I know you fully understand, when we divert those Navy

funds, those are dollars that are unable to go to very important

projects that benefit quality of life of every solder, sailor, airman,

and Marine out there.

So that is an unpaid editorial comment on my part. If you would

like to comment, I would be appreciative.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. McHugh, thank you for your kind remarks. I will take the concerns expressed by Ms. Boyda, the chairman, and yourself back to Mr. Dominguez and raise them with

him. And we will see where that sort of process goes.

I understand and appreciate the dynamic that you have laid out.

I understand it. I will make sure that I will raise it with the appropriate folks, Dr. Chu and Mr. Dominguez, and see how that will

be addressed in the coming weeks and months.

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Loebsack.

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to follow up a little bit on what Congressman

Courtney was talking about. I am from Iowa, from the Second District of Iowa, and folks don’t think about military facilities in Iowa

very often. In fact, when I mentioned this prior to the hearing

today, Mr. Lepore thought I had Rock Island, but I don’t. That is

in Congressman Braley’s district. There are four Iowa National

Guard facilities included in the 2005 BRAC, and of these three of

20

them, all of which are in my district, have yet to be funded. The

Cedar Rapids and Middletown sites include Armed Forces readiness centers and field maintenance shops. The Muscatine site is a

readiness center.

The facilities were built in 1916, 1950, and 1973 respectively.

They are too small to support current operations. They contain asbestos and are prone to flooding, yet the Iowa National Guard has

not received funding to improve the sites in over 15 years.

The Iowa National Guard, like National Guard units across the

country—I don’t think this is necessarily a district-specific concern;

we already heard from Congressman Courtney, as well—the Iowa

National Guard faces increasing recruiting and retention shortfalls.

You mentioned sort of part of the overall force requirements.

Rundown, unhealthy facilities weigh heavily on recruitment and

retention. I think that probably shouldn’t go without saying. But

the readiness centers are therefore absolutely vital to the health of

the guard.

Secretary Grone, in your testimony, you state that BRAC 2005

is based upon, in part, ‘‘the impact on operational readiness of the

total force of the Department of Defense, including the impact on

joint warfighting, training and readiness.’’ The Army approved designs for all three BRAC sites, and my district will not only modernize infrastructure and maximize funding, but will also allow for

increased joint operations and training between the Iowa National

Guard and reserve forces.

Such infrastructure will improve, ‘‘joint warfighting, training and

readiness.’’ Yet this week, I was informed that the Army informed

the Iowa National Guard they do not intend to fund construction

of field maintenance facilities that are meant to support multiple

armories, despite having previously approved designs that are intended to do just that.

I am, of course, deeply concerned that cost overruns and delays

in the BRAC process have led the Army to prioritize funding in

such a way that the National Guard is being left behind with the

possible result that the Cedar Rapids, Muscatine and Middletown

sites will have to be scaled back and the effectiveness of BRAC

2005 reduced.

Can you just speak to some of those concerns that I have raised,

Secretary Grone? I really appreciate that very much.

And I guess one of the major questions is, are the cost overruns

and construction delays resulting in scaled-back goals for the

BRAC 2005 process?

Secretary GRONE. I am not aware that that is the case. And I

would have to go back and consult with the Army on what the force

transformation, reserve component transformation plan in Iowa

looks like and whether or not there are projects that are being adjusted. I mean, I just don’t know the detail, obviously, as well as

you do, sir, and I would like to go back and do that and get back

to you by Friday, if I could.

Mr. LOEBSACK. That would be great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Secretary GRONE. I mean, it is not the case that we are going to

comply with every recommendation. And the program and the resources in the program are designed to allow us to comply with

every recommendation. So I would like to go back and look at the

21

specifics on that one and then get back to you, because it

doesn’t——

Mr. LOEBSACK. Well, the timelines have been pushed back out.

Secretary GRONE. I mean, I certainly understand that, in some

cases, given the state of appropriations and planning, how projects

and plans can shift within the implementation period. That is one

thing we have to do. That is materially different from saying we

are not going to do something.

And the implication in your question that we are not going to do

something, then I want to go back and take a look at it.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 223.]

Mr. LOEBSACK. Okay. Yes, thank you, and I guess I just want to

reiterate again, you know, sort of the importance, the increased importance that we have seen in recent years with the war in Iraq,

obviously, and Afghanistan, as well, the increased importance of

the guard and the reserves.

These facilities, you know, they clearly have to be upgraded.

There is no doubt about it, because it will have certainly an impact

on recruitment in the future, as well.

So thank you very much to both of you. I yield back the rest of

my time.

Secretary GRONE. And, Mr. Chairman, if I might, just to make

sure that——

Mr. ORTIZ. Go right ahead.

Secretary GRONE [continuing]. Particularly the staff sort of understands. In the intervening 72 hours, if I indicate to them that

I am going to get back to them directly, we will also provide material in writing for the record so that the record is clear, so that

what is told to a member verbally is going to be told in writing on

the record. So I would just make sure that——

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.

My good friend, Mr. Robin Hayes.

Mr. HAYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And, Phil and Brian, thank you for coming today. You are on

your home field here, Phil.

I want you to both speak to me. Phil, begin first. Talk about

planning and implementation as it relates to BRAC on Impact Aid.

My focus is pretty much on BRAC and Polk, and the number of

students added to the school system.

If you would just update the committee on plans for implementation, execution, particularly of Impact Aid and assimilating these

students as the moves are made.

Secretary GRONE. Well, Mr. Hayes, as you know, one of the challenges of the Impact Aid program is that it is a trailing indicator.

The districts don’t receive the funds until after they know how

many students are there, and they have been working with them

for a year, and then they get the funds.

One of the issues is when Impact Aid money comes. And it tends

to be in a trailing indicator. If you have a stable population, stable

student environment, no significant increase in force structure,

that generally tends to work and work well.

Schools apply for the money after they know how many students

are there. We can do the Impact Aid categorization. One of the

22

challenges in implementation is that a number of school districts

are saying, based on the plans that a given component, the Army,

may have, we have an infrastructure challenge and we have an Impact Aid challenge, in terms of being able to support the students

when they arrive, even if we have the infrastructure.

And that is one of the issues that has been discussed between

the Army and the Department of Education, is to how to make that

process work a little bit better for local education authorities. I just

don’t know that we have an answer yet, a specific answer yet, in

terms of what any changes we may choose to make.

And that is just something—folks are still talking about working

with local folks about how this process is going to work.

Mr. HAYES. Obviously, this issue is very familiar to a—and this

is my fault—a fairly small group within DOD. Can you speculate

on how active this small, knowledgeable group will be in putting

forward what you just expressed is an essential idea, that rather

than following, if there is any way we can turn this into a lead in

preparation process, as opposed to trying to play catch-up?

Secretary GRONE. Well, I can’t speculate on how active or inactive any one individual is going to be for organization. And there

are still just a number of proposals on the table for how we deal

with the education question. And so there is no—I can’t be specific

in terms of what the answer will be, because we don’t know what

the answer is going to be yet.

And that is part of what results from the discussions we are having in St. Louis this week, the work that we are doing with local

education agencies, other interested parties. I mean, I think it is

just too early for me to be able to say that there is an answer.

Mr. HAYES. Well, Dr. Deegan will be in the next panel, and I am

sure he will speak to the specifics. But in the meantime, those of

you who are here and listening and those back across the river,

this is an absolutely family support issue. It is a crucial education

issue.

And I hope the number of people that are actively involved in advocating for increased Impact Aid will be listening and expanding

their participation and horizons, because it is so important for family support for our troops and education in general.

Brian, would you have any additional thoughts?

Mr. LEPORE. Yes, I appreciate the opportunity to jump in here.

As you may know, we are taking a look at the Impact Aid that is

available from the Federal Government more generally, not just

from DOD, but also Department of Transportation, Department of

Education, and so forth.

That particular engagement is well underway. We are in the

process of collecting data right now, visiting local communities, as

well as the installations that are surrounded by the communities,

and the Federal agencies that actually have some level of Impact

Aid available.

We expect to release that report later, in late-winter, mid-spring

time frame, something like that. We are still collecting the data

right now, have not begun to write yet. But I suspect that report

will answer many of the questions that you are raising. And as I

said, that study is well underway, and we expect to be done early

next year.

23

Secretary GRONE. And, Mr. Chairman, if I may add to Mr.

Hayes, this is not just—we are not proceeding with this as solely

just a DOD issue. There are a number of team and field visits that

are being conducted jointly between DOD and the Federal Department of Education.

So we are leveraging every part of the Federal interagency that

is concerned about the education of the children of servicemen and

women, to make sure that we understand the problem well, that

we are designing the right programs, that we are going to have the

right answers, and working collaboratively with folks.

So it is not just DOD. We are working actively with the Department of Education, and folks are out there working it very hard.

Mr. HAYES. Appreciate the interest and the comments, Mr.

Chairman. And I am sure it is something that you all will stay

after.

Dr. Harrison is our public school superintendent—wonderful individual and office to work through. And a few other little small

pieces in closing, we need some additional parking. They are not

listed in the material here today, but just a couple little pieces to

make BRAC work smoother. And MILCON is very important.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, sir.

My good friend, Mr. Cummings from Maryland.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Lepore, in 20 years, how much do you believe the overall

BRAC process will save the DOD and, specifically, the movement

of Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen’s Proving Ground? Do you have that

information?

Mr. LEPORE. Yes, I sure do. We have that, as well, in the report

that we issued yesterday. The 20-year net present value is running

on the order of $25 billion, give or take, and there is a savings, 20-

year net present value savings, according to the DOD data, from

closure of Fort Monmouth and the realignment of Aberdeen, and

the military preparatory school going to West Point, on the order

of $450 million, give or take.

The key point, though, Representative Cummings, is both of

them still do show a savings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I am sorry, say that again?

Mr. LEPORE. Both do—the bulk analysis continued to show a savings from the Fort Monmouth recommendation.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your service. And

BRAC is about far more than cost savings, is it not?

Secretary GRONE. Yes, sir.

Mr. CUMMINGS. It is about maximizing military value and creating synergy and efficiency within the Department of Defense, a

task that is critical for us to adequately provide support to our

troops overseas and ensure that we succeed in our mission to protect our families from terrorist attacks, is that correct?

Secretary GRONE. That is correct.

Mr. CUMMINGS. No, Mr. Secretary, beyond the cost and saving

value of the move of Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen Proving Ground,

what are the exact benefits that his consolidation will provide the

DOD and our troops on the ground, particularly in combating terrorists? Do you have that information?

24

Secretary GRONE. Well, Mr. Cummings, the underlying question

of how to deal with Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and

other mission sets that the Army needs and where to do that and

how to do that was a principal part of and a key aspect of this recommendation.

This recommendation is not about merely replicating the capabilities at Fort Monmouth at Aberdeen Proving Ground with no

other mission capability brought to bear. And I know there is concern about the cost of the closure and the realignment of those

functions.

But what is being created at Aberdeen is something we do not

have today. And as the Army details the report later this month

on how that plan will come forward and the capability that will be

built, pursuant to the recommendation, and the mitigation plan

that they have in place to mitigate for any loss of intellectual capital and how we will continue to proceed with the military mission,

it will be something that we will be able to demonstrate, I think

fairly effectively.

But the notion of the integration of a number of different prototyping facilities from a number of different aspects of a mission is

critically important. And I know there was disagreement at the

commission from folks who supported keeping missions at Fort

Monmouth.

But the Army’s view, the Department’s view, the commission’s

view that Fort Monmouth didn’t have the expansion capacity and

the capability to take these additional co-located missions that are

not just coming from Fort Monmouth, but that are coming from

two other Army installations to Aberdeen Proving Ground, was a

key part of what we are trying to do.

So the military value that is part of the underlying of the mission, ability to look at current and future missions in a very sort

of detailed way, is going to give the Army and the Army Materiel

Command and the C4ISR and other related missions the capability

that it needs for today and for the future.

The Secretary of the Army committed, the Department committed that we would realign and manage those missions and that

transition in a way that did not disrupt our ability to conduct ongoing operations.

It is in many ways not a dissimilar commitment from the commitment that was made in the realignment of military medical

mission inside the national capital region, but as we transitioned

to a new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that the

capability to support forces and support our people will be in place

before the mission transitions.

And so those commitments are there. The Army will, I think, be

able to demonstrate a very effective plan for that. But the underlying military justification, absent the question, just divorced from

the question of cost and savings, the inherent military value that

was demonstrated to the commission by the department remains

military value for a new capability we do not have today.

And it is critically important to the future of the Army and the

nation, and we need to proceed with it.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much.

25

And I understand that the DOD will be submitting a report certifying that the movement of Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen Proving

Ground will not harm our fight against terrorists? Is that correct?

Secretary GRONE. The commitment was that we would submit

that report by the end of the year, that is correct. And we are on

track for that.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. LoBiondo from New Jersey.

Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much for holding

this hearing. I, as many of my colleagues, have some very serious

concerns about the BRAC process, and in particular as it regards

to Fort Monmouth.

I would like to ask unanimous consent to submit a statement for

the record and, in so doing, expressing my serious concern about

Fort Monmouth, yield my time to our Republican expert from New

Jersey, and really in the whole Congress, Congressman Jim

Saxton, to carry on with this issue.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 170.]

Mr. ORTIZ. No objections.

Mr. SAXTON. I thank Mr. LoBiondo for yielding.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are actually here today to review the BRAC process. And I

think it would be interesting to put it into context in this way. I

remember 20 years ago when Congressman Dick Armey had introduced the first legislation to create Base Realignment and Closure.

In trying to get enough votes, there was a general from the Pentagon who came to visit. And he said, ‘‘We really need a BRAC

process.’’ And he said, ‘‘My job in the Pentagon has been to close

bases.’’ And he said, ‘‘Since I have been in that job now for three

years, we have closed none and opened two.’’

So he said we need a process, because many bases were opened

during World War I and World War II and established and have

grown under circumstances that were then important circumstances for the military at the time, but today’s military is different. So we need different bases, and we need to realign some.

And he said, won’t you please vote for what I call BRAC 1989?

I forget what the official name of it was then. And then the BRAC

process actually evolved from BRAC 1989 to BRAC 1991 and BRAC

1993 and BRAC 1995. And the process changed. And now we are

talking about BRAC 2005, and the process has changed yet again.

So keeping all that in mind and keeping in mind that the members of the Base Realignment and Closure commission are human,

keeping in mind that people who testified before the Base Realignment and Closure commission are also human, keeping in mind

that human beings from time to time do things that they wish they

could change later if they had the opportunity, and keeping in

mind that, when Congress as part of the BRAC 2005 process said,

‘‘Yes, these recommendations are acceptable,’’ and they became

law, and the only way to change them is by creating a new law,

and since Congress has historically declined to change BRAC, in

my view, as far as I know, ever, that means that the BRAC process

reaches a dead-end when Congress adopts the recommendations or

26

fails to reject the recommendations of the Base Realignment and

Closure commission. The process comes to a dead-end.

And I have always thought that it would be something that

would be healthy to explore, as to whether or not we really want

it to be a dead-end. Congress won’t deal with it. There is no process

in place through BRAC that I am aware of to deal with it.

And so, as part of this look that we are doing today regarding

the BRAC process, from your experiences—both of you have extensive experience, both in writing BRAC laws and in evaluating

BRAC laws, and in carrying out BRAC laws, I am wondering if

there ought to be a way that a Fort Monmouth or a whatever base

is—if there has been an egregious mistake made.

Is there room in the evolutionary process to plug in that would

address this dead-end problem that I am talking about?

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Saxton, I don’t know how one would do

that without reopening the entirety of the process. And the reason

I say that—and Fort Monmouth is an example, but it is not the

only example—is that there are fairly significant and very deep

daisy chains that affect each of these recommendations. And to be

able to say—which I do not concede—that a mistake was made in

this case affects at least four other installations and disrupts the

organic planning for how we would address the new mission and

the new capability.

There is always the thought that, once a BRAC commission

makes a recommendation and it is accepted and it becomes law,

that basing that force lay-down, whatever it is, is forever in stone,

the reality is that new mission requirements 10 or 15 years from

now—and it is slightly easier to do with smaller size military units

who can reposition forces, move a ship, move a squadron—the only

way to really get at the comprehensive question is through a comprehensive examination.

The recommendation of the Secretary of Defense, sustained by

the commission with some changes and then ratified by the President and the Congress, arose out of a comprehensive examination

of the technical capability and capacity of the Department of Defense. The only way to do anything like that would be to reopen

the entirety of the technical functions of the Department of Defense.

At that point, you have what is a rough equivalent of a miniBRAC. And future rounds of Base Realignment and Closure, as the

Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the commission indicated

at the appropriate point in time, their view was that Congress

should provide for a periodic, time-to-time—I believe it was at

every ten years—ability to go in and re-examine missions, re-examine deployment of forces and mission sets, and particularly as it affects things that involve civilian personnel, because the organic

statute makes it very, very difficult to realign or adjust missions

in any way, shape, manner or form, as it affects civilian personnel.

So the only way in which to do that would be along the lines that

Secretary Rumsfeld and Chairman Principi recommended, which is

a periodic, comprehensive examination. That does not mean that

every round would be as large as this one. This one occurred in the

middle of significant force transformation.

27

But the ability for a process to comprehensively look at all of the

available missions and make changes as necessary is the only way

that I know of that would be fair and reasonable and actually be

comprehensive enough so that we would have surety in the outcome.

Mr. LEPORE. As you know, we have been directed by the House

Armed Services Committee to do an ongoing monitoring, if you will,

of the implementation of BRAC 2005 with a post-implementation

report within one year of the end of implementation or, said differently, we will have a report out on or before September 14, 2012.

Essentially we expect that report will be a kind of lessons

learned report, what worked well, what didn’t, what was different

about BRAC 2005 versus the prior four BRAC rounds. And I am

hopeful that that report, when it comes out, may provide some assistance as the Members of Congress think about whether or not

there ever will be a future BRAC and, if there is going to be one,

regardless of its size or complexity or the estimated cost, that the

lessons learned from this BRAC, as well as the prior four BRACs,

are helpful in designing what the statute would look like to implement that future BRAC, if there ever is one.

So I am hopeful that that report will provide some of the kinds

of information that I think would be helpful at that point.

Secretary GRONE. And, Mr. Chairman, and just to quickly add

one aspect to the question that Mr. Saxton raised, I am reminded

that, when the Administration sought authority, it requested two

rounds. Congress, in its judgment, authorized one.

So the ability to have had, I think for lack of a better term, a

self-corrective mechanism or a re-examination would have been

provided, but the national decision—the national decision was one

round. Our original proposal was for two.

Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, if I could just—so the answer is that

the only way to have a re-examination would be to have another

round of BRAC, where a base that had been closed could be reconsidered in that BRAC round, is that what you are saying?

Secretary GRONE. In my personal opinion, yes. It is the only way

to have a comprehensive examination of the question.

Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. Now I yield to my good friend from Guam, Mrs.

Bordallo.

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank

you for calling this meeting today.

Mr. Grone, thank you for testifying. And I also want to thank

you for your service and wish you the best of luck in your future

endeavors. Mr. Lepore, I appreciate all the work that the Government Accountability Office, especially your team, and for matters

of the interest of Guam that you have rendered.

My question has to do with cost savings. The skepticism of the

cost savings with the BRAC process has been well-known, and I

have long been skeptical about the cost saving benefits of the

BRAC process.

In the 1990’s, Guam was the crosshairs of BRAC, with the closing of several critical installations on our island, namely the Naval

Air Station and the U.S. Ship Repair Facility. At the time, I was

the lieutenant governor and the chair of the BRAC commission cloVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
28

sures, and I traveled many times to the Pentagon to plead with

them not to close bases on Guam because of its strategic position.

The base closures, in my opinion, were intended to save the Department money in the long run. However, nearly a decade later,

the strategists are re-proclaiming Guam as the most strategic asset

in the Pacific. And now we prepare to meet the demands of an estimated 30,000-person increase in population, primarily as a result

of the realignment of nearly 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa,

costing nearly $14 billion over the next 6 years.

This military buildup on the island makes the BRAC decisions

over the 1990’s seem short-sighted and has made the current realignment more difficult, as DOD seeks to reclaim lands, improve

infrastructure that had been neglected for many years.

Perhaps the 2005 round of BRAC has yielded what some would

believe to be similarly short-sighted recommendations. Now, among

these recommendations would be the decision to close Fort Monmouth. The GAO report released yesterday indicates that there are

cost overruns totaling about $680 million, resulting from the realignment of personnel and military assets from the fort to other

locations in the United States.

Fort Monmouth is an important military asset for research and

testing and evaluation of new technology. As DOD continues to implement this BRAC recommendation, what steps are being taken to

mitigate any further cost overruns, specifically associated with the

BRAC changes at Fort Monmouth?

Additionally, the GAO report cites that part of the cost overruns

are due to the fact that personnel and infrastructure changes at

other military installations, such as Aberdeen Proving Ground,

could potentially delay the actual closing of Fort Monmouth.

I fear that such a delay issue could also emerge with regard to

the realignment of military forces from Okinawa to Guam. Why

hasn’t the Department built in buffer time for these types of

moves?

Secretary GRONE. Ma’am, the answer to your last question is the

statute provides the deadline. The legal mandate is that all Base

Realignment and Closure actions resulting from the 2005 round

must be completed by September 15, 2011.

That is not a discretionary choice on the part of the Department.

We have to finish by that deadline.

The question of costs and savings at the general level—while I

understand your question, I respectfully disagree. But our colleagues in the Government Accountability Office and we, as was indicated earlier, have this disagreement over military personnel savings.

Even if you discount, which I don’t concede, the military personnel savings that result from this round, the savings are still substantial at over $2 billion in annual recurring savings beginning in

2012. When I served on this committee as a member of staff, a

good MILCON program for any of the components in any given

year was $1 billion dollars. So from my perspective, that is the

rough equivalent of two military departments’ MILCON programs

every year from here to the far horizon.

Those are resources that can be reallocated to other purposes.

And if you concede the point on military personnel eliminations

29

and the savings and cost avoidances that come from that—now we

are talking about $4 billion in annual recurring savings on an annual basis. That can be more effectively applied to mission support

or military construction or the movement of the Marine Corps from

Okinawa to Guam or whatever the mission set might be.

Even with, on the question of savings, this question of, what is

the annual recurring savings from the closure and realignment of

the missions at Fort Monmouth? Both we and the GAO agree that

there is a savings. Those savings are—given the nature of Fort

Monmouth, those savings do not accrue and this is not a dispute

over whether or not military personnel savings are real or not.

These are savings that result from overhead. And it is a point

that we and the audit community do not disagree on.

And as I previously indicated, one of the great challenges in implementation is timely receipt of appropriations. And again, we are

in a position where we are the 261⁄2 months we have had effectively

to legally implement the decisions of the commission, as they were

enacted into law.

And for 14 of those 261⁄2 months, we have been encumbered by

some way to act. And our ability to get to the legal deadline is entirely dependent, again, upon the ability to apply resources where

they are needed, on time, to be able to accomplish the mission.

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Grone.

I also respectfully disagree on the savings. I am very curious

about Guam, because now we are spending billions of dollars to rebuild housing and what-have-you that has laid dormant for all

these years. And in the tropics, things deteriorate very quickly.

And I am just curious—I am having the staff here look up the

savings. Were there savings on these closing the bases in Guam?

Secretary GRONE. I don’t have the COBRA analysis on the 1993

or 1995——

Ms. BORDALLO. Can I ask you to provide the committee with the

cost savings? Because now we are spending so many billions of dollars to relocate, and all of a sudden we have decided that Guam

is strategic. So I just wondered, you know, if you could provide the

cost savings in that—for the naval activities on Guam.

Secretary GRONE. We could. I would caution, ma’am, though,

that some of the—it is not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison,

because some of the facilities that were closed are not facilities that

are going to be used to support a Marine moved from Okinawa to

Guam.

Ms. BORDALLO. I understand that.

Secretary GRONE. So there would have been significant acquisition activity of facilities in any event, even if the 1993 round had

not occurred.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 223.]

Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I had one more quick

question for Mr. Grone.

Mr. ORTIZ. Because our new member from Colorado is very anxious to ask a question. He is a new member. But go ahead. Go

ahead.

Ms. BORDALLO. Very quick. I am just curious about the BRAC

2005 joint basing.

30

A joint base will be valuable on Guam if its cost savings are realized. However, some of these joint basings, I don’t know if they

have been 100 percent workable.

I am just wondering, the Air Force base and the Naval base on

Guam are 20 miles apart. Now, the mere geographical separation

of the two installations could inhibit the foreseen cost savings envisioned by BRAC recommendations. So to that end, to what extent

will the department allow base commanders to determine how joint

basings will be implemented? That is my question.

Secretary GRONE. The joint basing recommendations are among

that small set of recommendations where business plans have yet

to be approved. There are a significant set of proposals on guidance

to the field about how to implement joint bases.

There remains some—although the differences have narrowed—

there remains some disagreement about one or two core principles.

And the senior leadership will have to sort through those disagreements.

Under any scenario, without regard to the policy issues that are

at dispute, the process that we are laying out begins at the local

level, within a framework of overall guidance. And there will be

some considerable discretion at the local level to design processes

that make sense.

We are currently conducting tabletop exercises at all of joint base

locations, and we have conducted them in Guam.

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes.

Secretary GRONE. They are designed to inform the memoranda of

agreement that are going to be necessary to implement that process. My expectation is that those would be ratified by the vice

chiefs, so we will have a process that will reflect local requirement.

We are not going to manage that with an across-the-world screwdriver on Guam down to some very narrow ridges. But we are

going to put it within a basket of general guidance, so that commanders have some surety about what they need to do.

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Grone. And just so you keep

Guam on the radar screen.

Secretary GRONE. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you.

We are very happy to have a new member who is a member of

the Readiness Subcommittee. From Colorado, he brings a lot of

knowledge to our committee, and I am just happy that he belongs

to my subcommittee, Mr. Lamborn from Colorado.

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And it is an honor to join this subcommittee. And I don’t have

an immediate question, so I would like to yield my time to my colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Smith.

Mr. ORTIZ. The gentleman yields.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you to my good friend from Colorado. And

thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing us to sit on this committee.

There are four of us here that are not part of it, and I do thank

you for that.

Mr. Chairman, while it is probably true that many, perhaps

most, of the BRAC recommendations years to date have refocused,

synergistically enhanced, and led to positive military outcomes,

31

that is, the joint base in New Jersey, the impending closure of Fort

Monmouth represents an egregious exception that unnecessarily

puts the warfighter at risk.

Because of a near-certain loss of over 3,000 highly skilled, highly

motivated, extraordinarily talented men and women, 70 percent of

the fort’s workforce will not move. It will take several years to replicate in Aberdeen what is currently a world-class facility.

Mr. Chairman, we are at war. We don’t have years. Gaps put

lives at risk. Victor Ferlise, recently retired after 36 years of C4ISR

service, including the 14 years as deputy to the commanding general, will tell the committee in panel two that Fort Monmouth

ranked extremely high in military value, including first in development and acquisition in information systems technology and first

in sensors, electronic and electronic warfare, and that only when

non-mission-related attributes are factored in does its value drop.

Secretary Grone testified just a few moments ago that military

value was the primary consideration in making closures and realignment recommendations.

So my first question to Secretary Grone: Would you explain this

contradiction?

In areas where it really matters, high military value, one, one,

one and three, when non-mission-related attributes are factored in,

it drops. So if that was the criteria, why did, again, Fort Monmouth

need to be put on the closure list?

Secretary Grone also testified that COBRA was not designed to,

nor does it produce, budgetary, qualitary estimates. Why not? Why

not take a better look at what the real costs are?

Chairman Ortiz, you talked about the process being tainted and

flawed. Nowhere is that more apparent than in that underaccounting.

Systematically underestimating costs, GAO puts Fort Monmouth’s closure at $680 million more than advertised, raises

the concerns among many of us that selected estimates were used

to achieve a desired outcome.

It turns out that even when COBRA’s numbers were corrected,

like the garrison operating costs, thought to be $93 million, it was

really $50 million per year. Even the number of $1.44 billion, in

terms of what the total costs of moving would be, those validated

costs were not included in what the BRAC commissioners looked

at.

The bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is this: In an unprecedented act,

the BRAC commission itself seemed troubled enough to caveat this

and only this decision with unprecedented conditionality by requiring a DOD report verifying that the move to Aberdeen will be accomplished without a disruption of their support to the global war

on terror, that redundant capabilities be put in place to mitigate

potential degradation of such support, and to ensure maximum retention of critical workforce.

We argue, our delegation, that this simply cannot be done. And

we believe that the numbers and the rationale that we have offered

throughout this process proves it.

I would ask, Mr. Chairman, respectfully that there be a followup hearing—you did say this was the first hearing—perhaps in

January, to carefully review that report, which DOD will submit at

32

the end of this month, to scrutinize the business plans to ensure

that each concern is thoroughly addressed.

Too much is at stake. Too many Americans, too many coalition

soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines may be put in serious jeopardy if we don’t get this right.

Specifically, in addition to the military value question, Mr.

Grone, I would ask—30 percent retention of critical workforce is

the anticipated number, 70 percent loss, 3,100 employees. Does

that, in your opinion, satisfy BRAC commission concerns of maximum retention of critical workforce? And does this loss of difficultto-replace intellectual capacity and capital pose any risk whatsoever to the warfighter?

Vic Ferlise calls this ‘‘irreparable and irresponsible.’’ He says

there will be very few employees left to train those folks in Aberdeen who may get these jobs. Who is going to do the training if

that wealth of knowledge has been lost?

We are very concerned about this. And on jointness, there was

already jointness with what is now the joint base in New Jersey.

And I think that was missed, and that is a serious oversight.

But if you could speak to those issues, I deeply appreciate it.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.

Let us give time now to the secretary to respond to these questions. Go ahead.

Secretary GRONE. Well, Mr. Chairman, there is quite a lot there.

Let me start with the first question, military value.

The issue, as it was laid out by the gentleman from New Jersey,

is in relation to certain snapshots of military value. What he also

didn’t say is that, when all aspects of military value were racked

up, Fort Monmouth ranked 50th among Army installations.

Now, military value has a number of aspects to it. One of the key

aspects is status quo configuration or the development of future capability. And in the development of the recommendation, the emphasis was on the development of future capability.

And in my response to the gentleman from Maryland, I talked

a bit about that future capability, and the Army will detail in further detail the mission sets as they are going to be developed at

Aberdeen and why they are critically important, as we realign mission not just from Fort Monmouth, but also from Fort Belvoir, to

co-locate at Aberdeen Proving Ground and create synergistic relationships that go beyond the current status quo in C4ISR.

On the question of COBRA, there is a reason why COBRA

doesn’t have budget-quality data, and that is that, in order to secure budget-quality data, we would have to send site survey teams

to the field. If we send site survey teams to the field, we could give

the impression that we have already made decisions. COBRA was

designed to give some reasonable estimate on a cost basis with a

zero-year baseline so that you could adequately compare a variety

of options.

Mr. SMITH. With all due respect, if I could interrupt, Secretary

Grone, $1.4 billion was sent from the fort to the Department of Defense. Why wasn’t that included?

Secretary GRONE. I will get to that point, Mr. Smith. And that

point is this: The law provides, specifies, requires that the procVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
33

esses the department uses rest on certified data. Certified data is

a chain-of-custody process.

Questions go out from the headquarters through the system to

the field. The data comes back up from the field, from Fort Monmouth, through the system to be used in the process. Later on in

the process—frankly, at points after which the secretary had delivered his recommendations—there were individuals who suggested

that some of the data might be wrong.

The department was not legally in a position to accept data outside the certified data chain of custody and submit that to the commission because it would violate another requirement of the statute, and that is that we treat all installations equally.

Now, on the question of whether or not the commission had access to the information, the commission records in the three instances, three separate hearings, demonstrate clearly that the commission had access to data that we could not provide. The commission, having examined that record thoroughly, both our record and

the record it developed through field hearings and other submissions, voted 6–2 to not remove Fort Monmouth from the list and

then voted 7–1 to allow it to proceed.

A number of the issues that have been raised by members recently in the press and in other fora were the same issues that

were addressed at the commission. Same data, same issues. The

commission, exercising its independent discretion, also changed the

Fort Monmouth recommendation of the department in at least one

instance: by requiring night vision capability to remain at Fort

Belvoir.

The notion that the commission was a rubber stamp for the department’s recommendations is not supported by the facts and is

also not supported by the activity of the commission in changing

35 percent of the recommendations in some way major or minor.

The issue is, what is going to be the future capability that is to be

developed at Aberdeen Proving Ground in a synergistic way that

ties a number of different activities together, not just to co-locate

them, but to enhance collaboration that will allow better support

to the warfighter?

The issue of loss of intellectual capital, the record is replete with

debate inside the Department and at the commission on whether—

the essential question was this: Is intellectual capital elastic or inelastic?

At the end of that debate, the judgment was that intellectual

capital was elastic, because if you told the other positions, you can’t

move anything. And so the inherent military value in the recommendation, the implementation plans with the Department of

the Army, the needs of the technical community, the needs of the

warfighter are all going to be met through the objectives of this

recommendation.

And the notion that somehow senior military leadership in the

development of the recommendation did so in a way that would put

lives at risk on the battlefield is simply wrong, I submit respectfully.

Mr. SMITH. Could I follow up very briefly, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. ORTIZ. Well, go ahead, make it short, because we have got

other members who want to ask questions, as well.

34

Mr. SMITH. Did the Department anticipate a 70 percent of the individuals, the men and women, not moving? I mean, would you

have arrived at the same move, Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen, if

that were factored in? I mean, that is such a high number of talented individuals who are lost to the system. I mean, just because

the law required this or required that, at what point do you say,

‘‘Corrective action needs to be taken. This is a mistake’’?

Secretary GRONE. The availability of individuals and their ability

to retire, if we want to look at it from that way and the status quo

configuration, is that it is about the same rate as it is across the

rest of the Department.

So what essentially is being argued—and I understand and respect the needs and desires of the New Jersey delegation and other

interested parties to want to retain that mission there, and they so

fought, as you did and others did, before the commission. I respect

that.

The national decision was to do something else. And our obligation is to carry out the statute. And that is what we intend to do.

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, one of the things that—and the reason

why this BRAC moved forward was because there were some promises made that there were going to be a lot of savings. And this is

what, in fact, one of the gentleman who happens to be a good

friend of mine was the architect of moving with the base closure

commission, it was his legislation, even though he was a member

of the Agriculture Committee. You know, he moved forward that

we should go ahead and do some base shutting down because we

were going to save money.

And when the BRAC commission came about, he was lobbying to

keep bases open, you know? So this is why a lot of members are

confused. Maybe there should have been some restraints, you

know? He was for shutting down bases. He was, he said, for saving

a lot of money. And then he decided that it was time for him to

move and tried to keep some of the bases open.

So this is why there is a lot of confusion among members and

other people. But at this point, let me yield to my good friend, Ms.

Shea-Porter, for a question, if she has one.

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you. As a former military spouse and

a member of the Armed Services Committee, I am sitting here listening and questioning some of the numbers and the results of decisions that were made in the BRAC closing.

And in particular, I am thinking about the thousands of soldiers

and other military personnel who have been moved around or anticipate moving, closing, whatever. And I think about the 30,000 or

so that will be coming to Guam. And I wonder about the security.

Guam is very critical to our security. And I know that they

closed some bases when the argument was made before how critical

Guam was to our security.

We spent the money, and now we are taking another look and

sending those 30,000 to Guam. It seems like a very inconsistent

policy, really short-term planning, and not looking at the cost.

And so I am going to yield the remainder of my time to the gentlewoman from Guam who can question this. Thank you.

Ms. BORDALLO. I want to thank the congresswoman. I have already asked my two questions, so thank you very much.

35

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay.

So can you explain to me, please, why just a few short years ago

it was essential to close some bases in Guam and now, all of a sudden, we are looking at Guam and saying we need to send a large

number of troops there? And what has changed so dramatically?

And what is the long-term view for Guam and for other areas that

are essential?

Secretary GRONE. Well, I think it is important in this context to

recognize that, when we were working with 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994

rounds, the global situation was significantly different. The wall

had come down in 1989. We were taking force structure out of the

system. And in that context, the department had demonstrated significant excess capacity.

So the first four rounds of BRAC were principally about reduction of excess capacity. This round occurs in the process where we

are engaged in broad force transformation and where there are

other key aspects.

I mean, certainly in the context of implementing the round, we

are also in the process of growing the force, which was not on the

table when we were making these decisions, but I would also point

out that we close no significant ground force maneuver installation

in this round.

This was, if one could characterize it, principally a back-shop

support structure force transformation BRAC. Despite the fact that

we in—and I know that the gentlelady from Guam views it as regrettable that there were certain decisions that were made on

Guam many years ago—the fact of the matter is that we didn’t

abandon Guam. The Air Force has been a key player in the strategic presence forward in the Pacific on Guam for many, many years,

as has the Navy.

In the context of realignment of force posture, in the context of

a strengthening and repositioning of the strategic relationship with

Japan, we agreed in the context of a broad series of arrangements

that would affect the entirety of the alliance throughout the Pacific

to reposition Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

It is a different strategic rationale, a different strategic mission.

And while I understand some of the challenges that it poses locally,

this realignment of forward force posture—and it really is a question of realignment of forward force posture—is simply not the

same dynamic as we had in the mid–1990’s when we were trying

to realign some things.

And, frankly, there were folks at the time in Guam that were

urging us to close things on the island. And the lieutenant governor

at the time didn’t take that position. Certainly not. But——

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Well, may I interject here——

Secretary GRONE. But we had—it was simply a different strategic—we were in a different strategic place. And now we have to

move forward. And the importance of that arrangement as it relates to Guam is the United States is not bearing the full costs of

the move.

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. But what we are hearing now, and even

though people obviously have their communities, I don’t think we

are all just looking at a point from the impact on local commuVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
36

nities, as critical as that is. We are also looking at, what is the

strategy here? And what is the cost?

And when you look at these overruns, there is something wrong,

fundamentally wrong with the information that Congress received

and that others received in the 2005 closing. And that, I think, is

the core of the question here: Are you looking back at it? Are you

examining it again? And how are these decisions made?

You are listening to the gentleman from New Jersey talk about

the critical effect on security here. Something seems fundamentally

wrong. And I know that you can’t answer all of it, but this is a concern of Congress to get to the bottom of it.

Secretary GRONE. And I appreciate the question. We are always

looking at lessons learned from all of these processes, but I don’t

concede the central point, which is that the actions that we are undertaking lack military value.

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Well, we almost lost the Portsmouth Naval

Shipyard in that last round, and that was pretty essential to our

national security—and not just in my humble opinion, but in

many—and fortunately, it didn’t happen.

But then you take a look at the decisions, we have to look longterm strategy.

Secretary GRONE. And the process as it was designed in that case

got to an answer for the Nation that is accepted, a decided issue,

and we will continue to utilize those assets as are required. This

process is designed to allow the Department of Defense and the

Secretary of Defense to develop a suite of recommendations. The

law does not allow us to implement them and decide them upon

our own.

There is an independent, strictly independent review of those

recommendations, and then a subsequent independent review by

the President, and then one by the Congress. So——

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I understand the process. I live there. But the

problem was it did show up on the list, and it was not simply an

easy decision. It required many, many voices to fight back and

point out. It shouldn’t have been on the list to begin with, and

these are the concerns that we have, how they wind up on the list,

and then the story that they are told about what it will cost, and

then the fact that the savings aren’t even recognized.

I think there is a lot of reason for concern today. And I yield

back. Thank you.

Mr. ORTIZ. Let me yield now to my good friend from California,

Mr. Sam Farr.

Mr. FARR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a delight

to be back on this committee. When I first got elected to Congress,

I served one term on it, and eventually ended up on the Military

Construction Appropriations Committee, so I have been very involved in BRAC issues, not only jurisdictionally, but personally.

My district has had part of our bases up every single BRAC

round. And when I arrived, the BRAC had decided to close Fort

Ord, which was the largest military base I think ever closed in any

round. It affected about 33,000 people.

And today one of our witnesses is the executive director of that

reuse authority, Michael Houlemard, who has also been elected to

be—he is the President of the reuse communities association.

37

But my questions are—I mean, what I have observed is that this

is all driven by cost avoidance. How do you not retain unnecessary

real estate and the jobs that go with it?

But, in fact, no matter what happens—and this committee is interesting. It has had people that had windfalls because they are

going to gain folks, and you have a lot on this committee that are

wiped out by having closure. In either case, what you will argue

is that there aren’t enough resources to do what needs to be done.

And it seems to me that the tools that I have learned, why we

were so successful in redevelopment, was that we got all the land

free. There are two instruments that you never hear about anymore. It is called a public benefit conveyance, where the law lays

out what you—the DOD can give the land free, particularly for

educational purposes and so on.

And then there is an economic development conveyance, which is

also available to the discretion of the Secretary, and allows you to

give land free.

And what I wanted to ask—because I want to echo what everyone else said about Mr. Grone. I mean, he worked in this committee. He certainly knows the inside of Congress, the House, and specifically these issues, having been the staffer for so many years,

and then moving over to be the undersecretary.

And I think we are going to lose an incredible asset for this nation when you leave. And I just want to thank you for your public

service. We haven’t always agreed, but you have been there, and

you understand. And that is what is so important.

But, Mr. Lepore, I want to ask you, do you value the giveaways?

Do you put any economic value on those, on the public benefit or

economic development benefit transfers?

Mr. LEPORE. In our 2005 report, we pointed out that that is one

area where some better accounting might be helpful, that that is

something the department generally doesn’t try to account for.

Mr. FARR. You will account for when there is a windfall, a gaining community, the impact that it is going to have on schools and

local infrastructure?

Mr. LEPORE. We have not attempted to account for that, in the

way that I think you are referring to. What we are trying to do is

we have a study underway right now that is taking a look at the

impact on the local communities and the Federal assistance that is

provided to the local communities in the gaining areas.

I should point out that that review is bigger than BRAC’s. And

some of the growth on the growth bases is BRAC, but some of it

is other issues, as well.

Mr. FARR. But it is bigger than BRAC, but it is about the military. It is about what the chairman talked about. And it is about

what the former lieutenant governor of Guam, now congresswoman

from Guam, talked—it is quality of life for military. You can’t have

a military base isolated from the community.

And that is what I think is so wrong with the BRAC process, is

that we don’t understand and we don’t evaluate what kind of incredible exciting growth can come out of, if you give this land away.

I am really against these sales, because you have to then sort of

prostitute yourself to get enough value out of that land in order to

buy it.

38

And who is buying it? It is the local government. Where do they

have the resources to do it? And on the other hand, we don’t value

the fact that there are impacts.

And I know my question—and back to Mr. Grone—is that we

have in the law, under Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA), a

provision where the Department of Defense can ask for money to

provide for impact construction. We have done that in the past.

There is just nobody asking for it.

We have also provided—and this was before BRAC—the Kings

Bay National Submarine Base in Georgia—when that was built, we

built schools, we built community centers, we did all of the sort of

off-military budget impact expenses just to make that base a workable base.

So the history is there, and the authority is there. And the question is, why don’t we ask for the monies to allow the schools that

are going to have the realignments and the growth in those communities?

As you know, Mr. Bishop, who is on the MILCON committee, is

really complaining about the fact that, in Georgia, the influx of

kids is not accounted for and not paid for. And there is no way that

the school district has the resources to do this.

So can we start—I mean, what I would like to hear from both

of you is the response, in your senses. Can we ask for the money?

Because we have the authority to do it, but haven’t done it. And,

two, can we start getting a better accounting, if we are going to

really do—if the whole thing is about cost avoidance, it seems to

me we are just shifting the costs and not the value.

And we need to make sure that we are better prepared to estimate value.

Thank you.

Secretary GRONE. There are a number of different strands to

your question, Mr. Farr. Let me try to address as many of them

as I can.

The question of what we do with education, as you know, is a

complex one. Traditionally through the BRAC process, we have not

done what you cite with some of the other examples. There are a

number of communities where there are growth activities underway which have undertaken the necessary bond issues to plan for

the growth.

It is a dialogue that we will have to keep dealing with. And so

the authorities you are looking at is something we would have to

sort of take a look at. I just am not familiar with it at that level

of detail.

But the question of recognizing that the installations are part

and parcel of the communities is one that is, I think, well understood inside the Department. And the work that we have done,

starting with sustainable ranges and all the other work that we are

doing, and to work with state and local governments on the

sustainment of the mission in the post-BRAC environment, recognizing that this is probably—recommendation of the former secretary and the chairman of the commission, notwithstanding a

once-in-a-generational activity. We may not come back to something this significant for the next 20 or so years.

39

And so the notion of ensuring that we are working closely with

state and local government on education, on transportation, on

range sustainability, environmental buffers around our bases is a

critically important part of the program. It is not, strictly speaking,

a BRAC program, but it is part of the organic mission of the department, and it is a function that we undertake very seriously.

The transportation effects are all being assessed, and we have

what I would call a regular order program in the Defense Access

Road (DAR) program for that. There are a number of different locations across the country that are being assessed as to what is DAR

eligible and what is not. And those things that are eligible we will

move forward with as we can, and we will do pursuant to existing

authority.

So there a number of different ways of getting at these problems.

We just need to continue to work aggressively with the communities. We pledged to do that.

On the disposal side, as you know, we changed a number of our

policies leading into the disposal of assets from this round. We

have had—and I don’t want to speak for anyone in particular. Mr.

Houlemard can speak more directly to this than I—but we have

had a very close working relationship with growth, as well as communities that are going to undergo the unfortunate pain of a base

closure or a major realignment.

The question of whether or not everything ought to be sale or not

I think is a settled question. The issue and the policy of the Department is a mixed toolkit approach. There may be parcels that

we sell; there may be parcels that are square in the sweet spot for

public benefit conveyance (PBC); there may be parcels that work

best in a no-cost or a regular Economic Development Conveyance

(EDC) process.

All of those tools are available as part of a redevelopment planning process that is really under the control of the local communities. The Department is not going to dictate to local communities

what that redevelopment option ought to be. We have some responsibility to make sure it is consistent with our authorities, but we

are not going to tell folks that we think you ought to put a school

here, and a this there, and a that there.

And we committed to streamlining the process. And we committed to keeping to the deadlines that are in the statute and, in large

measure, we have. And local communities are beginning to respond

in a timely way with redevelopment plans.

So this process, while we have some challenges in implementation at growth sites, from a disposal perspective, we have kept to

our deadlines. Where we have not kept to deadlines, we have done

so largely at the request of a local community. There are communities that have come in and asked for additional stretches of deadlines in order to make their redevelopment plan work and work effectively. And those have been granted.

So we are trying to do everything we can to work with folks to

make sure that, as an asset transitions from military use to civilian use, and goes back on the local tax rolls, but it is in the best

possible position, and we have no desire—on the day I walked into

the Department of Defense, there were still over 400,000 acres on

our books from prior rounds of BRAC. And we have whittled that

40

down to under 40,000 today. And that is principally at six or seven

locations, heavily impacted by Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), which

thankfully we do not have in this process this time.

But our objective is to position local communities for success.

That means transitioning assets as expeditiously as we can, and we

are trying to do that. And we have greatly benefited from the insights that you and other members have brought to this process as

we were developing a new policy.

Mr. FARR. The only comment I would have is that I don’t think

the Department is very aggressive about telling communities that

they can get the land free through EDCs and PBCs. It seems to

me that is always a struggle. You want highest value for the land,

and that is one of the problems that I think the GAO’s office has,

is they are always accounting for, ‘‘Let us get value for this.’’

But it is all out of the same tax base, whether those taxpayers

are paying the money to the Federal Government or the stage government or local government. The real value is, how do you reuse

it?

Secretary GRONE. Yes, understood.

Mr. FARR. And if we have to sell it, I don’t think the—you know,

the feds can say we got fair value for our land. On the other hand,

the community had to go through a real strain to try to pay for it.

And I do think you ought to use the EDCs and PBCs must more

aggressively.

Secretary GRONE. As Mr. Houlemard can testify—and I don’t

want to speak for him—and he has heard me say and give the

speech on mixed toolkit on more than one occasion. So official policy of the Department is for all approaches to be on the table.

Mr. ORTIZ. We have three more members who have questions to

ask, and then, of course, we need to move to our second panel.

My good friend, Frank Pallone, from New Jersey, do you have a

question? Go right ahead, sir.

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you again for having this hearing. And as part of my questions to the two witnesses, I want to

explain my approach and why we have asked you to have a witness

from Fort Monmouth and why we are spending so much time today

on the Fort Monmouth issue.

Mr. Grone acknowledged that, at the time of the BRAC decision,

there was definitely controversy or disunity, if you will, amongst

the BRAC members over whether or not Fort Monmouth should

close and those functions be transferred to Aberdeen.

And as a result of that, there was this report that the BRAC put

into the BRAC commission’s report that said that the Pentagon

had to look at the situation at Fort Monmouth—and I will specifically use the language here—and said that the BRAC commission

stated that, ‘‘The Secretary of Defense shall submit a report to the

congressional committees of jurisdiction that movement of organization, functions, or activities from Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen

Proving Ground will be accomplished without disruption of their

support for the global war on terror.’’

Now, I mentioned this because Fort Monmouth was unique

amongst all the BRAC recommendations or report in that this was

the only one that had this caveat, and it was because of the disVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
41

unity and questioning that, perhaps, this was not the proper move,

to close Fort Monmouth, that this report was put in to report back

to the committees, including this one.

And I mention this, Mr. Chairman, because it is our understanding, from talking to the BRAC commissioners, that unlike the rest

of the BRAC, where you would have to have a subsequent BRAC,

as Mr. Grone said, in order to reverse the recommendation, in this

case, you would not because if the report from the Pentagon

showed that this closing should not occur because it would negatively impact the global war on terror, Fort Monmouth would not

close and the movement to Aberdeen would not take place.

So I am just trying to make the point—and I am going to ask

these questions again—that this is a unique situation. And once

this report comes out, because it has been delayed and the Pentagon has said that they will certify that it is okay to make the move,

but that once this report comes out, I think it is the obligation of

this committee, as well as the GAO and all of us, to follow up, and

look at this report, and determine whether or not it was done accurately, because if it wasn’t and the recommendations should not be

to close Fort Monmouth then, within the context of the BRAC, you

could keep Fort Monmouth open, without having to go to subsequent legislation or a subsequent BRAC.

So I just want to follow up on what my colleague, Mr. Smith,

said. It is very important when this report comes out at the end

of the month that this committee look at it, have another hearing

specifically on that, because they were given that responsibility, essentially, by the BRAC, with this language, and that we also have

the GAO comment on it and give us their input, as well.

And I guess I am a little concerned because I don’t get the impression that Mr. Grone necessarily sees it this way. And I have

already heard from the Pentagon for a long time now that they are

going to say that it is okay in this report to close Fort Monmouth.

And so I have two questions, one to Mr. Grone, and one to Mr.

Lepore. First of all, Mr. Grone, is the Pentagon, in issuing this report, actually doing an analysis that would decide whether or not

Fort Monmouth should stay open or closed? Or have they already

made the decision that Fort Monmouth should close and they are

just tailoring this report to go along with that recommendation?

Are we going to get a back-and-forth here about the pluses and

minuses of keeping Fort Monmouth open, or is this already a foregone conclusion on the part of the Pentagon?

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Chairman, I want to—I desire to be—and

I understand and appreciate the question of Mr. Pallone, but I

want to be quite precise in my answer, because the question which

he raises is a core issue in a matter of ongoing litigation. So for

purposes of the record, I would just like to clarify what has happened and what the government’s position is, and then we can deal

with any subsequent questions, if I am able to answer them beyond

that point.

There is ongoing litigation in Federal district court in New Jersey on this subject. There was also a request for a preliminary injunction filed by the union representing civilian employees at Fort

Monmouth.

42

The district court issued an order denying the union’s application

for a preliminary injunction. In that order, the district court also

denied the government’s motion to dismiss, but did so without prejudice and would leave to renew the motion after January 1, 2008.

The district court administratively stayed the litigation under

further order of the court. The district court has not taken any action to prohibit continued implementation of the recommendation.

On the question of whether the reports required, the BRAC act

requires the Department to close and realign all installations so

recommended by the commission. And this information is in filings

that the Department of Justice has made in the district court.

The BRAC act does not require DOD to submit reports recommended by the BRAC commission or follow any other commission recommendations that are not either base closures or base realignments. It is therefore the Department’s position, as reflected

in its filings in the United States District Court for the District of

New Jersey, that there is no legal requirement in the BRAC act or

elsewhere that DOD submit the report to Congress that the BRAC

commission recommended, although DOD nevertheless intends to

submit such a report by the end of the year.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman——

Secretary GRONE. If I might, because it bears on what I think

will be your next question. Is the BRAC recommendation to close

Fort Monmouth conditional? The closure of Fort Monmouth is legally required. This is not, as some would contend, a conditional

closure. That may not occur because a report cannot be written.

DOD has already determined that Fort Monmouth can be closed

and its functions relocated without jeopardizing support for

warfighters in the field.

And the BRAC commission agreed with that conclusion. This is

not a question of whether the move will occur, but of how the move

will occur, without disruption to support of the war on terrorism

and other critical contingencies. And those two aspects of the government’s position in the Federal district court, as a matter of just

informing members how we intend to proceed, given the issues that

are at moment and given the discussion within the commission, we

will provide a report to Congress by the end of the year, as the deputy secretary of defense so indicated to Members of the New Jersey

delegation.

That report will lay out how we will proceed with the plan, how

we will mitigate the effects that were referenced in the commission’s report. It is a question of how the move will occur; it is not

a question of whether.

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up, but let me

just say this. This, Mr. Chairman, goes to the whole crux of the

matter here. The Pentagon is essentially saying that this BRAC requirement, which was articulated to us by the commissioners, those

who were opposed to the closing, because it was a divided commission on this, that this was a compromise that was put in as a way

for the Pentagon to come back and do an analysis of whether or

not this closing should occur.

Now, they are saying that this is not required by the law. It

doesn’t even have the status of report language. We are saying it

is the law, and that is what was articulated, and that is why—that

43

was the compromise that was entered into by the commissioners in

order to get them to unanimously agree to this decision on Fort

Monmouth.

So the problem here is that there is a basic difference in terms

of what was told to us by the BRAC as to what this report meant,

that it was, in fact, a law and had to be done, and that this committee and others in Congress could respond to it, as opposed to

the Pentagon that doesn’t even see if it is even report language or

required to be done.

So that is why I think it is very important, when this report

comes out, that there be a follow-up hearing on this, because otherwise they just say, ‘‘We are issuing the report, and it doesn’t make

any difference.’’ And that is simply not the case.

And I know—I was just going to ask Mr. Lepore, and he can just

answer yes or no, whether the GAO intends to analyze this report

when it comes out and report back to the committee in Congress,

in your analysis, if you could just answer that yes or no, because

my time is——

Mr. LEPORE. Yes.

Mr. PALLONE. You do? All right, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. And this is one of the things that we would like to

see the implementation of the BRAC law. And there are a lot of

questions like yours, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.

But what we are trying to do now, we have two more Members

who would like to ask questions, and then we are about to have

votes in the next five minutes. And then, of course, we have a second panel.

Mr. Secretary, you had something to say?

Secretary GRONE. On the question, if I might follow up, because

I think it is critically important about the question of intent, the

BRAC commission explained its recommendations slightly differently than as it may be understood by Mr. Pallone and others.

And I think it is a matter of interpretation, but I think the commission’s explanation is rather clear.

Mr. SMITH. Would my friend yield, Mr. Pallone?

Mr. PALLONE. Sure.

Mr. SMITH. Again——

Mr. ORTIZ. Just don’t make it too long, because his time has expired.

Mr. SMITH. That is why a second hearing, that would focus on

the business plan, whether or not this could be achieved, but let

us invite the chairman of the commission, Secretary Principi, to be

a witness, as well, because he will know what was his intent and

that of the others, because we think we have a very clear understanding that this was a conditionality.

And so, again, we shouldn’t talk about, ‘‘Well, maybe this or

maybe that.’’ Let us get to the bottom of it.

And again, Secretary Grone, at the bottom line is the warfighter.

This is not, as Mr. Cummings said in the newspapers, a football

game and it is against the New Jersey delegation versus the Maryland delegation. This is all about the men and women in the field.

And I have spent too much of my time in Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals, as former chairman of the Veterans Affairs

(VA) Committee, writing legislation that became law to help servVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
44

ice-connected disabled veterans to look askance when we believe an

egregious mistake is in the process of being made. We are bipartisan on this.

And I would hope that the cooler heads at the Pentagon would

say, ‘‘A mistake’’—well, we are not just going to keep going up that

hill, even though our men are being slaughtered, to use a metaphor.

Mr. ORTIZ. The gentleman makes a good point.

Mr. Holt.

Mr. HOLT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate

your holding this hearing. It really is important.

First, I would like to ask unanimous consent to submit for the

record written statements by Admiral Paul Gaffney, Mr. Bob

Geridano, Governor Jon Corzine, and Mr. Jon Poitrus that bear on

the subject at hand.

Mr. ORTIZ. We have unanimous consent. You can go ahead. We

will put your questions for the record. Go ahead.

Mr. HOLT. No, but there are other statements that I would like

to have inserted in the record.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 178, 181, 190, and 193.]

Mr. ORTIZ. No objections. So ordered.

Mr. HOLT. Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Grone and for Mr. Lepore.

Of course, the point of BRAC was to improve efficiency, to increase

jointness, to improve support for the warfighter, and to save

money.

As Mr. Vic Ferlise will testify, I think quite eloquently, it does

none of those, in many cases. And as Mr. Lepore has shown across

the board, there are enormous cost overruns.

Some of us are focusing on Fort Monmouth because it seems to

us that this is Exhibit A in what is wrong with BRAC 2005. And

I hope, Mr. Grone, you didn’t mean it in the dismissive way that

it sounded to me, that this is a matter of parochial interests versus

national interest.

As Mr. Smith said so passionately and correctly, this is not a

football game or a matter of local jobs. There are some fundamental questions here, and that is what we want to get at.

And so I will talk a little bit about Fort Monmouth, but it has

to do with our national defense effort. Really, there is so much to

cover.

But first, as Mr. Ferlise will say, with regard to Fort Monmouth,

it is not just a matter of packing the assets and moving them. The

assets in this case are people with years of experience that will

take years of experience to replace. And there is a fundamental

misunderstanding in the Army and, I must say, throughout our society that research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E), is

an off-the-shelf item.

These researchers cannot be replaced easily, however good the

schools are in Maryland, however good the living conditions are in

Maryland.

And you know, you say that at Fort Monmouth there are people

who are just on—kind of have the average availability for retirement. Well, the fact is yes, they are senior, but they have not been

45

retiring. They have been staying on the job at Fort Monmouth until

recently.

And that is the problem. Former Secretary Harvey said they will

be replaced by smart young guys. Well, no. They can’t be replaced

for years without smart young—by any smart young guys.

And so when you said, Mr. Grone, that it will take another

BRAC, am I correct in understanding that there is no degree of

harm to the warfighter, there is no degree of risk at which we

would put soldiers by this move, that would lead DOD to recommend that Congress reverse this part of BRAC?

In other words, just—I know you don’t agree with the argument,

but if there were an argument that because of the technology and

the day-to-day updating of techniques for detecting and disarming

roadside bombs, or for intercepting communications, or for tracking

mortar fire, that you would not reverse—recommend a reverse of

the decision?

Furthermore, should I understand from what you say that there

is no increase in cost that would trigger you, the department, to

recommend a reversal?

I mean, is it $1 billion, or is it $2 billion? Is there no trigger at

which you would say, ‘‘This is wrong. We had better go back and

look at this?’’

Furthermore, would you include in this consideration where

there now appears to be several hundred million dollars in savings,

by your calculation and Mr. Cummings’ calculation, that you would

count or you would not count the billions of dollars of infrastructure improvements that are being asked of the Federal Government for Maryland in order to accommodate this move?

And then for Mr. Lepore, I would like to ask whether the GAO

will take a closer look at the specific decisions—for example, the

top five or ten most expensive or most cost-increased projects and

bases.

And furthermore, is it true that you have not reviewed the savings at the same level of detail that you have reviewed the cost,

and partly because those savings would come five years or ten

years from now?

So is it possible, then, that this BRAC round will actually result

in less net savings once you do get around to looking at those?

And finally, have you looked at why officially availability cost

data appear to have been ignored by the BRAC, by the commissioners—for example, the fact that the military prep school was

said to cost two or three tens of millions of dollars, roughly $30

million, to move, and yet months before BRAC recommendations

were even sent to the President, there were construction requests

totaling $226 million?

In other words, officially available, ten times the cost, ignored,

just in that one aspect of the move—will you be looking at that in

the GAO?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, we have tried to be as fair as we can with

all the Members. We have the DOD authorization bill on the House

floor right now. In the next five minutes we are going to have a

vote. So go ahead and respond to it.

46

And I know your concerns. I mean, they are very legitimate concerns that you have.

Go ahead and respond to this question, and then I hope we have

time to give one of our senior Members of the committee, Mr.

Reyes, also time to ask a question.

And then we are going to go vote, and we have a—we have one,

two, three, four—five votes, so we are going to be gone for some

time, and we want to be fair to the next panel as well.

So, Mr. Secretary, go ahead.

Secretary GRONE. I will try to respond to Mr. Holt as quickly as

I can.

And I wasn’t being dismissive of it being—what I was saying is

I understand the perspective of Members as they try to defend the

mission while acknowledging that they see the mission as a national mission locally.

And it is not to be dismissive of the concerns of anyone who

fought the decision at the commission or subsequently on the national decision to close Fort Monmouth and realign its mission.

That was certainly not the intent.

The only way I can answer the question of what—how we are

proceeding on the question of intellectual capital—I discussed that

earlier in the whole debate about whether or not—whether that capacity could be grown, how it could be grown and when it could be

grown was part of the deliberative record of the Department, and

I won’t belabor it here.

But the commission concluded that the adverse effects of moving

existing programs from Fort Monmouth could be managed over the

six-year implementation period by properly sequencing the movement the programs.

And again, from my perspective, our inability to adequately plan

to implement the round that is materially affected by our inability

to access the resources that are necessary creates uncertainty as to

when that proper sequencing will occur.

So I mean, I view, frankly, the implementation of this as a

shared responsibility. And we are not in a position right now to effectively implement as effectively as we might want a number of

these.

But we are continuing to work with the committees to ensure

that we have the resources to implement it in the proper way.

The hypothetical you asked me—is there a trigger—I, frankly,

don’t have the ability to answer that question. The Department has

a legal obligation to carry out under current law the recommendations as they have passed into law.

I don’t have the discretionary ability to make up a number and

say at that point we ought to reconsider the recommendation. The

Department continues to believe and maintain that the underlying

military value of the move merits implementation of the move.

And I simply cannot speculate on the hypothetical of at what

point we might want to reconsider something. We, frankly, don’t

have that authority.

And the underlying military value of the recommendation, as I

expect will be demonstrated in the report, as has been testified to

numerous times, as the Army is looking forward to in its impleVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
47

mentation planning, continues to argue for the effective implementation of the recommendation.

Mr. ORTIZ. We are going to be voting very quick. Let me go

ahead and yield to my good friend, chairman of the Intelligence

Committee and a ranking member on—also a very high—like we

say in Texas, high-quality member of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. Oh, I thought you were going to say I was a very tall

member. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for holding this

hearing.

And good to see you here, Secretary Grone, and I understand Friday is your last day.

Secretary GRONE. It is.

Mr. REYES. We very much appreciate your work and your dedication to all these issues that are so important to us.

And the chairman was indicating to me that Congresswoman

Boyda raised the issue of the commissaries.

Secretary GRONE. Yes, sir. Yes, she did.

Mr. REYES. You know, I just want to make the point, because I

was on Fort Bliss Monday, and the commissaries are a big issue,

a big quality-of-life issue, for our soldiers and for their families.

In fact, this past weekend we were welcoming back after 15

months in theater the 41 Cavalry from Fort Bliss, and at the ceremonies some of the families were anxious about the issue of commissaries. You know, they frankly don’t care where the money

comes from.

Secretary GRONE. Understood.

Mr. REYES. That is a bureaucratic thing that I think we do a disservice to them not making a decision and getting that money out. I know in the case of Fort Bliss we are waiting on $32 million.

We need to have it by January, because otherwise that commissary

project is delayed. Soldiers are coming back. We have promised

them that everything we could do would be done.

And yet we have got this issue because of an internal bureaucratic dispute that the decision hasn’t been made. Two things. Can

you tell me what the status is?

And second, can I get your commitment that before Friday you

will kick somebody in the butt and get this thing going? And if you

need help, Chairman Ortiz is right here.

Mr. ORTIZ. He has got those big, tall boots.

Secretary GRONE. I understand. As I indicated to Mr. McHugh,

I mean, as you know, sir, the responsibility for the commissary and

exchange program falls within a different undersecretariat. But I

know that those requirements are being addressed.

Frankly, I don’t know the up-to-date status as of today in terms

of where they are. As I indicated to Ms. Boyda and Mr. McHugh

and the chairman—and make the same commitment—we will get

back to you with the answer to that question—I will engage Dr.

Chu and Mr. Dominguez and see where that may be.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 224.]

Mr. REYES. Is it Secretary Chu that is——

Secretary GRONE. The responsibility for those programs rests in

the undersecretariat for personnel and readiness.

48

Mr. REYES. Mr. Chairman, can we get some action going on that?

Because this is a quality-of-life issue for our families.

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, and we have discussed this prior to you

coming here. This is very, very important.

And we can continue to—I was asking my good friend Phil Grone

if he knows who is going to replace him so we can get a name and

address and a phone number.

But, no, this is a serious, serious business, you know. And one

of the reasons why it has become very serious is that through all

the Base Closure Commission, most of this money that we spend

are soldiers’ money. They are not appropriated funds.

And some of this money have been spent or given back to somebody else when they shut down the base. And that is the soldiers’

money, not money from the taxpayers. But I have been through

base closures, you know, in Germany and all over the place.

They shut down the base. We give away from the theater to the

gulf course to the library—everything back. So I think that this is

a very, very important issue, and we will make sure that this is

addressed.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, and good luck to you, Mr. Grone.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ORTIZ. Any further—Randy?

Mr. Secretary, as you can tell, it didn’t burn. We thank you so

much for all your service to our country and to our committee and

your dedication, and we want to wish you the best.

And like many of the Members said this morning, that you have

many friends here. And if we could ever help in any way, you let

us know. But we want to——

Secretary GRONE. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, and I have

always appreciated the support and advice of the subcommittee as

well as the Military Construction Subcommittee’s, and it is a particular irony for me to virtually end this career in the same room

in which it started.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much.

What we want to do now—there are a lot of Members who wanted to be here, but we have the rule on the floor on the DOD bill,

so what we can do also is allow Members who couldn’t be here to

have statements and also questions for the record, so you can pass

on to the Pentagon—as you can tell, there is a lot of concerns

about——

Secretary GRONE. I understand, sir.

Mr. ORTIZ [continuing]. This last base closure commission.

What we are going to do now—we are going to recess. We have

a second panel coming on for five minutes. And then we have another member who would be taking over. Thank you so much for

joining us today. Thank you so much.

Are you going to stay with us, or——

Secretary GRONE. I am planning to go back. I have a meeting

that I need to get to, if that is okay with you.

Mr. ORTIZ. Okay. Thank you also for your testimony, sir. Thank

you so much.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir.

[Recess.]

49

Ms. BORDALLO [presiding]. The Readiness Subcommittee on

Armed Services will now come to order.

On the second panel we welcome this afternoon four witnesses,

including the honorable Anthony Brown, lieutenant governor in the

State of Maryland; Mr. Michael Houlemard, President of the Association of Defense Communities; Dr. John Deegan, President, Military Impacted Schools Association; and Mr. Victor Ferlise, former

deputy to the commanding general for operations and support for

the Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command

from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

Without objection, the witnesses’ prepared testimony will be accepted for the record.

And now I recognize the first witness, the honorable Anthony

Brown, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Maryland.

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY G. BROWN, LT. GOVERNOR, STATE

OF MARYLAND

Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Bordallo. I

want to thank Chairman Ortiz and Ranking Member Forbes for

giving me the opportunity to present myself and offer some information regarding the base realignment and closure.

While this first panel spoke mostly to the DOD side of the implementation of BRAC 2005, what I would like to do during my brief

time, and as outlined in my written statement, which has been accepted for the record, is to talk a little bit about what we are doing

in Maryland as a BRAC mission growth community to prepare for

the implementation of BRAC, the arrival of households and the creation of jobs.

I am Maryland’s lieutenant governor. I have the honor of serving

as the chairman of Governor O’Malley’s subcabinet on base realignment and closure, and I also serve as the co-chair of the National

Governors Association steering committee on mission growth, and

I serve as co-chair along with a state senator from Georgia. Today,

however, I speak only from my perspective in Maryland.

Let me start by saying that Maryland understands its expanding

responsibility to the country. We understand our responsibility to

our nation’s defense and homeland security and the obligations to

support those who are, in fact, supporting the warfighters. And we

embrace that responsibility.

I also want to take this moment to thank the Members of the

committee who support the warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan

and around the world. I, too, served ten months in Operation Iraqi

Freedom, and I really appreciate the support of the soldiers that

Congress offers.

As a result of the BRAC 2005 decisions, Maryland is going to see

between 15,000 to 16,000 direct jobs move to Maryland. We estimate that that will generate an additional 30,000 to 45,000 indirect

and induced jobs, for a total of 28,000 households.

This is going to occur in five communities around Maryland—Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort George Meade, Andrews Air Force

Base, Fort Dietrich and the consolidation of Walter Reed and the

Bethesda Naval Medical Center. As you can see, Maryland is truly

a joint state.

50

Because of the multiple moving parts, upon our inauguration,

Governor O’Malley created a subcabinet on base realignment and

closure, and that subcabinet essentially leads our coordination effort for BRAC.

The subcabinet includes members of—the Secretary of Transportation; housing and community development; labor, license and regulation; higher education; K through 12; and a few other departments.

Our effort is to enhance that coordination that happens horizontally among state agencies and also to enhance that vertical coordination between our Federal delegation, between the military

installations and between local, county and municipal governments.

To date, the BRAC subcabinet has traveled around Maryland

and has met with the leadership at each of the five mission growth

communities or installations in Maryland.

We have also traveled to northern Virginia to meet with the

leadership at Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). And we

have also met with the leadership at Fort Monmouth.

And the purpose of these meetings is to better understand the

needs, the concerns and the issues that these moving activities face

and how best we as a state can accommodate their needs.

We have already identified challenges, and these challenges are

not unique to Maryland. They are challenges in terms of workforce

development.

And earlier this morning you heard, particularly as it pertains to

Fort Monmouth and the movement to Aberdeen Proving Ground,

that only 30 percent, it is estimated, of the workforce will move to

Monmouth. There are workforce challenges.

There are also challenges with schools, school construction and

the delivery of educational services, and there are challenges in the

area of transportation.

Having spent the day yesterday in St. Louis with six other mission growth states and representatives from those states, I can assure you that the challenges in Maryland are not unique to Maryland. These are challenges that all BRAC mission growth communities face.

However, with the process that we put into place, the subcabinet,

working with our regional organizations—for example, around Aberdeen Proving Ground, we have established the Chesapeake

Science and Security Corridor. This is an alliance of private sector

and public sector, public sector at all levels of government.

We are able to identify those challenges and work toward meaningful solutions so that we can do our job in Maryland, which is

essentially outside of the fence, outside of the gate, to ensure that

we are BRAC-ready for the arrival of BRAC families and BRAC

jobs.

And let me close by saying what we are doing in Maryland is not

necessarily going to work for every state in the country, but we

hope that we will serve as a model for the kind of processes that

a state could put into place to ensure that they effectively and adequately address the challenges of infrastructure and human capital

development associated with BRAC.

Thank you very much, Congresswoman Bordallo.

51

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brown can be found in the Appendix on page 120.]

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Lieutenant Governor

Brown. I am very pleased to have you here today. It was very nice

meeting you earlier. We both shared some of the same duties, at

least in my past life.

Now the chair would like to recognize Mr. Michael Houlemard,

President of the Association of Defense Communities, and also to

remind you that each of you has five minutes to testify. Anyone

whose statement is longer than the five minutes—it will be entered

into the record.

Gentlemen.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL A. HOULEMARD, JR., PRESIDENT,

ASSOCIATION OF DEFENSE COMMUNITIES

Mr. HOULEMARD. Thank you, Chairwoman.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Association

of Defense Communities today and thank Chairman Ortiz and all

the distinguished members of the subcommittee for this opportunity.

As a representative of the Association of Defense Communities

(ADC), I am honored to represent all of the association membership. We have over 1,400 members representing more than 100 different communities across this nation.

We are the nation’s premiere organization representing these diverse interests of communities. We particularly noted today that

Congressman Farr attended, who received the prior award from the

Association of Defense Communities as we recognize all of our

country’s leadership for its support of communities in defense installations.

ADC members include communities responding to the full range

of BRAC impacts, including numerous communities affected by previous BRAC rounds that are still coping with the significant impact

of closure, and especially environmental problems.

We also represent every major community that is impacted by

2005 decisions.

ADC’s diverse membership places us in a unique position to address the successes, challenges and concerns of defense communities. And today, I would like to highlight just a few key themes

that come from the written presentation that was offered earlier.

First, I want to speak about growth communities, where the arrival of thousands—and as the lieutenant governor just mentioned,

tens of thousands of new residents place a considerable strain on

the local infrastructure.

As you heard from him and others, there is an increasing demand for schools in growth communities, which also must provide

health care, roads, police, fire, child care, sewer and a full array

of municipal services that historically have been provided on base

and with Federal funds.

These growth communities are both eager to support their local

installation and anxious to welcome the arriving missions.

However, many communities, especially the rural ones, face overwhelming financial challenges if they are to fully support such a

large influx of military growth.

52

Second, I want to point out that from our historical perspective,

we have observed several trends throughout the course of the

reuse, planning, environmental remediation, property disposal and

economic development components of BRAC.

We particularly applaud the efforts of the Defense Department

and the Office of Economic Adjustment as well as the military services in supporting the BRAC 2005 closure communities as they

move ahead with the initial planning process. Many successes have

occurred there.

However, after community reuse plans have been completed, the

most significant problems arise for communities. Once the bases finally close and the last soldier or sailor leaves, communities encounter new challenges, such as the required maintenance of significant facilities and infrastructure.

As the members of this committee are undoubtedly aware, crucial decisions must be made about caretaker needs. Most of those

have been underfunded and historically have created much problems—underfunded in the BRAC account, that is—which will,

which can, which have resulted in lost use and value in these significant assets.

Second, environmental cleanup and both the pace and the cost

associated with environmental cleanup in the remediation process

is significant to many closure communities.

And then finally, we want to point out the concerns we have

about property disposal and what seems to be a very heavy reliance

on public sale that may inhibit or potentially delay prospects for

successful redevelopment in communities.

It is certainly ADC’s belief that the Federal Government must

continue to consider and emphasize that there is more to disposal

and reuse than simply the monetary gain or return to the Department of Defense.

As our national economy slows and individual communities are

impacted, we hope the Department will rely on other property disposal tools such as economic development conveyances, as Congressman Farr indicated, including at no cost, to dispose of base

property and ensure successful, speedy community-driven reuse.

And last, certainty is an important requirement for communities

in their response to BRAC recommendations. Driving local planning efforts in both closure and growth cases while ensuring they

stay on track is the certainty of change.

A firm deadline and an unwavering decision provide communities

with the necessary certainty to allocate scarce public resources and

the ability to track private investment.

The absence or erosion of certainty sends a very dangerous message to the marketplace and to other communities affected by

BRAC decisions, injecting doubt into an already complex, sophisticated and arduous process.

Certainty helps local communities to budget the resources and to

craft policies that will aid in their ability to support the military

mission and growth.

Communities rely on this certainty and equity to make plans for

dealing with closure, and ADC is concerned that there might be an

unprecedented—an unusual precedent that would be set if the cloVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
53

sure process is reopened in a way that affects communities down

the line.

A secondary component to this certainty process is the financial

impact. In addition to programmatic uncertainty, communities affected by BRAC 2005 must also be assured that military services

receive an adequate stream of funding to carry out the BRAC recommendations.

Chairman Ortiz earlier today made some comments that we were

very encouraged by in support of the certainty prior to the 2005 decisions.

We have a significant additional amount of comments that we

have prepared in our written comments, Chairwoman, but thank

you for the opportunity to appear today as ADC looks forward to

its ongoing relationship between this subcommittee and America’s

defense communities.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Houlemard can be found in the

Appendix on page 131.]

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Houlemard.

And now the chair recognizes Dr. John Deegan, President of the

Military Impacted Schools Association.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN F. DEEGAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

MILITARY IMPACTED SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION

Dr. DEEGAN. Thank you, Chairwoman.

We appreciate the opportunity to be invited to offer testimony

today. We really, as an organization, represent all the military children not served by DOD.

DOD actually serves about 100,000 students in the United States

and overseas, and there are about 500,000 students that we represent. And those children are as important as any, and we recognize many of the challenges they are facing at this time.

We want to make sure that you understand how important it is

that schools, quite often, are the system to support the military,

and those young children—and when they are disturbed or bothered by deployment, or whether it be a BRAC operation where you

are moving people—you know, they have needs and their schools

as well.

And they quite often look to their teacher or to their school for

help. And the public schools that are serving these children are facing a number of changes as well.

The whole military transformation that we heard about from Mr.

Grone and the changes that that we are looking at in restructuring

the military—the housing privatization where children and families

were moved off base and then moved back on base, and moved to

different neighborhoods and houses.

And we as an organization took a really hard look at how that

was going to affect them, and many of the young people are going

to be affected in their housing, through free and reduced lunch or

Title 1, or food stamps.

And we have taken care of that with the help of Congress to

make sure those aren’t hardships those families have to face.

With the whole global re-basing, it is kind of interesting that we

have, at one point—it has been a couple years now we have been

talking about moving people from overseas to the United States,

54

and as an example, those children that are being moved here—no

money follows those children.

So wherever DOD can build schools around the United States—

or, excuse me, around the world, DOD can put them here and put

them there.

And even where the Army built a school recently at Fort Hood—

or at Fort Stewart, the whole idea of movement of people and the

BRAC, effective BRAC, has left a lot of schools wondering how am

I going to deal with those kids, and how am I going to deal with

the facilities that are there.

And we have been talking a lot about that. The idea that the

Army is re-modularizing has a big effect right now because no one

is sure where people are going to be going.

The idea of the BRAC—sometimes there are effects because of

bonding, where somebody may have spent money, set up a bond,

and they are paying off their bonds, and through BRAC that

changes.

And sometimes in a school district they may lose 10,000 and pick

up 10,000. And that has a tremendous effect, because in the impact

aid, when you get to count a child that year, whoever is there by

January 30th—you count that year, and you get the money the following year.

If you happen to come in after January 30th—a military family

moves in February—we don’t get funding for two years because it

will take the next year to do the count and the next year to get

the funding.

So we have some real funding issues, and Congress has been real

good about helping us through the—not through the DOD bill, but

by attaching to the DOD bill.

We have an element where we put on an amendment onto that

bill to ask for additional funding to kind of bridge the gap.

Many years ago, in impact aid, the impact aid law took care of

that, because it was in the law. In 1994, that was eliminated from

the law because it didn’t look like we were going to have a lot of

movement and change, and that was the force that wanted to take

and change that.

Well, today we need that more than ever in impact aid, and the

way it has helped us to do it is through Congress stepping up. In

2006, we got $7 million. In 2008, we got $8 million—or, excuse me,

in 2007 we got $7 million—or $8 million. In 2008, we got zero.

And everything is kind of in shock, saying, ‘‘All these kids moving back, all this activity, why didn’t we get any money?’’ So we

are still asking that question. And we are hoping to be able to work

in the 2009 budget to be able to put that together.

And we as school districts depend on the impact aid program, but

one little bit of a thought is to let you know that program contains

low-rent housing, civil service, Indian lands and military. It is not

just a military program.

If you put one dollar into the impact aid program, we get 40

cents out of that dollar. And so these schools are asking, you know,

how we can get help, and we are looking for the best way to get

help.

I would tell you when it comes to DOD, we get tremendous

amount of talk. We don’t get anything but talk. And Mr. Grone

55

today used the words ‘‘we are planning,’’ ‘‘we are working with,’’

‘‘we are assessing,’’ ‘‘we are doing everything,’’ but it never ends up

in any money from DOD.

DOD can always do it for the 100,000 military kids, but they

can’t do it for the 500,000 in our communities. And the OEA has

been good, too, but they are also talking and planning, but there

is—no money has surfaced. They have got an idea and a plan, but

no money has surfaced.

Thank you to Congress for what you have done.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Deegan can be found in the Appendix on page 142.]

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Dr. Deegan, for your testimony.

And now for our final witness, Mr. Victor Ferlise, the former deputy to the commanding general for operations in Support for Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command.

STATEMENT OF VICTOR J. FERLISE, ESQ., FORMER DEPUTY

TO THE COMMANDING GENERAL FOR OPERATIONS, SUPPORT FOR THE COMMUNICATIONS-ELECTRONICS LIFE

CYCLE MANAGEMENT COMMAND, FORT MONMOUTH, NJ

Mr. FERLISE. Good afternoon, Madam Chairman.

As the deputy at Fort Monmouth, I was responsible for 14 years

for the acquisition, logistics, research and development that went

on there. I am going to use an acronym, C4ISR—command, control,

computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. That is

the business of Fort Monmouth. That is what saves warfighters’

lives.

I am here today to tell you that the BRAC decision that we are

discussing was unsupported by any objective evidence. It was developed in violation of the BRAC law. It was developed in violation

of the DOD guidance on joint cross-servicing.

It was the result of withholding crucial financial information

from the BRAC Commission. Now, you heard this morning—and

this is added to my remarks; I apologize—that there was not certified data.

I am here to tell you it was certified. I certified it on July 14th,

four months before the commission met. I understand from other

sources technical information was suppressed under a suggestion

that the material was secret, and it was not secret.

That all leads me to a conclusion that this was a predetermined

conclusion on the part of the Army leadership that is unfounded

and ill-advised—ill-advised for warfighters. That is what I am talking about.

I am not talking about that we told them the money was wrong

in the beginning. We did tell them the money was wrong. We told

them it was $1.44 billion. I said that. I signed that. It is absolutely

true.

An interesting fact is I realized that that would not be well received. I asked for an Army Audit Agency, an independent agency,

to come in and review our data to make sure we weren’t wrong.

That decision was not reviewed.

The Army Audit Agency was directed not to review that data.

That data did not go into the certification that was submitted to

56

the BRAC Commission, and it was not posted or it did not come

to light until December, four months after that, when that document became part of the official record of the BRAC commissioners.

So when I hear people say about growth—I listened to the comptroller general this morning discuss growth. Well, I was there when

we talked about the cost of building the U.S. military academy

prep school at West Point.

We had just completed a $25 million renovation of that facility,

and the proposal came in, and it was passed on to the commission,

that it would cost $22 million. On June 14th, five months before

the final BRAC hearings, there was a 1391 presented to the Army

for $227 million.

So it is not about growth. These are no surprises. And that is not

what I want to talk to you about today.

What I want to talk to you about is the 4,000 soldiers that lost

their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan to things like improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Those devices that killed and maimed most of

our soldiers are centrally managed from Fort Monmouth.

It is an extraordinary program with extraordinary talent, cutting

across all of the services. The heads of every joint panel come from

Fort Monmouth engineers. They are Fort Monmouth personnel.

Why is that? Because that is the center of excellence for counterIEDs.

Does it say no one else is doing it? No, others are doing it. But

they work in collaboration with Fort Monmouth. So when we talk

about closing Fort Monmouth, we are throwing out a lot of technology that will be extremely difficult to replace.

Madam Chairman, there is only a matter of time before those

IEDs come to our shores. It is the weapon of choice for insurgents.

I know the Department of Homeland Security has undertaken

some work to begin that.

All that technology is at Monmouth. The actuating mechanisms

is what we defeat. More than 500 times the enemy has changed

those actuating mechanisms.

And immediately, that information goes through the FBI Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC) center and comes

to Monmouth, where it is analyzed and countermeasures are built

and sent to the field, either through software upgrades of existing

systems, which now, by the way, number in the 30,000 range, or

through replacement of hardware.

If you travel to the theater, if any of the members have, they

have been protected by things like Warlock Green, Warlock Blue,

Warlock Red, Warlock Brown—the most recent. Those systems

come from engineers at Fort Monmouth. They are sustained by

people at Fort Monmouth.

Fort Monmouth is the national inventory control point for electronics. There is not another location where that is done. Every

day—by close of business today there will be 1,300 more requisitions there for support of our soldiers.

For this year, it will go over 400,000. And since 9/11, it is more

than three million requisitions have been processed through there.

This past year, $14.5 billion in contracts were awarded out of Fort

Monmouth.

57

When I listened to the secretary testify to the commission, he

said that he wanted to move Fort Monmouth closer to its test

ranges. Well, Fort Monmouth’s test ranges are not at Aberdeen

Proving Ground.

They are well developed. They are at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

And the secretary was told that by Commissioner Coyle, and he

simply dismissed it.

He was supposed to do joint cross-servicing. That is what this

was about. This was a real opportunity. DOD said do joint crossservicing. There are three electronics commands in DOD. Fort

Monmouth has one, Hanscom Air Field has one, and San Diego

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) has one.

It could have been a choice to pull these together, pick the best

of breed and build on that. We didn’t. We took an agency that was

number one in technology, in C4ISR, and we are moving it to an

installation that it less than number ten.

It doesn’t have that capability there. And that was well understood by Commissioner Coyle, and he attempted to explain it.

But I tell you today that I think it was a predetermined decision,

and it warrants looking at in every single aspect. Why was Triple

A directed not to review my numbers? Because my numbers would

have disclosed that this was a ridiculous idea.

Why were they not allowed to see the suppressed technical data?

For the same reason—it would expose what is a faulty decision.

I can’t be more passionate on this than I am. I have to tell you,

Fort Monmouth is the national inventory control point for electronics. One-half of all national stock numbered items in the entire

Army are managed from Fort Monmouth.

That means that one out of two soldiers—one out of two things

that a soldier touches comes from Fort Monmouth. They are always

in the electronics field, the night vision, all kinds of countermeasures.

If you flew in Iraq, you had jammers on those aircraft. They

come from Fort Monmouth. The pilot was flying with our night vision equipment. The radios in that aircraft come from Fort Monmouth.

The radar warning receiver that tells the pilot he is going to be

shot by a missile comes from there, and he can react to it.

Now, I heard this morning—I heard about how hard things were

and how difficult it was from my co-panelists here. I am going to

tell you what hard is, because I understand what hard is.

Hard is when a group of soldiers are asked to go out of the compound in the morning and half of them come back dead or shot up

because an IED blew up. That is not something to fool with here.

And that is what we are fooling with, make no mistake about it.

It is a tragic mistake, and that is why I am here today to explain

that to you.

The BRAC Commission—there was intense debate on it, and I

understand the legal position advanced by Secretary Grone here,

and I understand how they have to do that. But a question was

asked of him—is what would it take to have DOD come back and

say it is a mistake.

I think the answer should be there is something that would, and

it is where we are losing soldiers.

58

And I realize that I am over my time. I thank you for your consideration.

I would also just—in my remarks I talked about the American

Federation of Scientists. They have one quote that I would just like

to read, that there is firm evidence that some Pentagon officials,

not all, maybe not Mr. Grone, and I suggest not Mr. Grone, but

some Pentagon officials deliberately misled the BRAC Commission,

thereby deceiving the President, deceiving the United States Congress, and deceiving the rest of DOD and, more importantly, the

American public.

I attended two funerals of soldiers from New Jersey, and the last

one was in September 2007. A Marine was killed in Iraq as a result

of an improvised explosive device.

I am seeing the stop signal here, but I just have to tell you that

the horror that was on the face of those families is something we

can’t let continue.

And I can tell you one last thing, if I might, in the 29 months

since this decision was made, the Army still cannot articulate an

intelligent reason—they were asked three times why are we doing

this.

I didn’t hear one answer, but I heard, like my friend next to

me—I heard we are going to be told that answer. If that is such

a good answer, you should have been doing it all along.

And no steps—no steps—have been taken to ensure no impact as

a result of this move. No steps have been taken.

Thank you very much. I apologize for my passion on this subject,

but I am here because I speak for warfighters. I am not speaking

for the people of Fort Monmouth, the jobs, the money. It is about

soldiers. You are touching the wrong thing here.

Thank you, Madam.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ferlise can be found in the Appendix on page 150.]

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Ferlise. And I understand your passionate views, and the committee is very grateful for

these very disturbing facts but also very valuable. And they will

take them into account.

I also would like to mention, because we will be asking a few

questions here, I am sitting in for the chairman, who is down on

the floor voting. Without objection, the witnesses’ full prepared testimony will be entered into the record.

My first question is to you, Governor. Would you say you are satisfied with the information that the department has provided to

local communities?

Is it sufficient to begin the detailed community planning to prepare for the additional personnel expected at the conclusion of

BRAC?

And how has the department assisted in supporting the BRAC

changes?

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Congresswoman. You know, of course, in

this business, you know, you never want to say you are satisfied,

because you are always—you know, want to maintain your vigilance and make sure that you have the most timely and accurate

and updated information.

59

What I will tell you is that in 2006, when we received our first

numbers from the Department, we were able to conduct a Department of Labor (DOL)-funded study where we could project—based

on the number of direct jobs that were anticipated to move to

Maryland, we could project the number of indirect jobs, the number

of households.

And based on planning formula, we have a pretty good idea of

where the households will locate in Maryland, where the businesses are likely to establish their operations, and we have been

able to make some progress, considerable progress, with that information.

Since that report, that DOL-funded report which came out in December of 2006 based on the preliminary numbers we got, we continue to stay in dialogue with the department.

As I mentioned in my testimony, we have visited with the leadership at Monmouth and at DISA. We have regular meetings with

the installation commanders, constantly updating our numbers in

terms of the number of direct jobs, indirect jobs, and then we can

calculate the induced jobs from that.

So while we are grateful for the information we have, we continue to be determined to make sure that it is always the most accurate.

And at this point, I cannot say that the department has not been

anything less than candid and forthright with giving us that information.

Ms. BORDALLO. And part of the question, then, that I asked was

has the Department assisted in supporting these changes. Would

you say yes?

Mr. BROWN. Yes.

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes.

I have a question also for Dr. Deegan. Are communities able to

provide sufficient education facilities to support the 50,000 dependents expected to relocate as a result of BRAC 2005?

Dr. DEEGAN. In a real simple answer, no. Most recently, like at

Fort Riley, they were dealing with movement of troops in there,

and they opened up a Kmart store as a part of their school district.

We have a number of people that are doing that, trying to get

by because they don’t have the bonding capacity or the will to get

that done in a major military installation. And so the answer is no.

Ms. BORDALLO. Another question I have for you, Doctor, is some

rural communities have indicated that their bonding capacity is not

sufficient to absorb an influx of additional dependents without Federal assistance.

Could you explain some of these difficulties?

Dr. DEEGAN. The difficulties you have—as an example, a bonding

capacity may be just based on the size of the district and the rating. They may not be able to do all that bonding at one time.

A second thing is who is going to vote for a bond issue in a major

military community? Of course the military, if they register to vote

there, would vote for it. But people in the community won’t vote

for it because they don’t want to be stuck with the debt when the

military moves on.

So voting for bonds or getting bonds passed is a very poor way

to deal with the problem.

60

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Dr. Deegan.

Dr. DEEGAN. Thank you.

Ms. BORDALLO. I have one more question for Mr. Ferlise. How effective is the Department’s relocation assistance in helping impacted employees?

Mr. FERLISE. I have been retired since February, so I can’t tell

you what is happening right now, but I know the personnel people

at Fort Monmouth are working to accomplish that. So I really can’t

be responsive on the employees.

Ms. BORDALLO. I wish to thank all the witnesses. There is a little

chaos going on here. We have to be called to the floor.

And incidentally, for those in the audience who wonder why I am

not on the floor voting, I am a territorial representative. We only

vote for amendments, not the final passage of legislation, so I don’t

want you to think that I am neglecting my duties in the U.S. Congress.

But I do want to thank each and every one of you for very insightful testimony. All of your testimony will be included in the

record. And the chairman again thanks each of the witnesses for

being with us for this long period of time.

I have been told that the Readiness Subcommittee for the Armed

Services will recess until further notice.

[Recess.]

Mr. ORTIZ [presiding]. We are going to resume this hearing, and

we are sorry that we were gone for a few moments. We have the

DOD authorization bill, and we had a bunch of votes.

But now I understand that we were in the process of asking

questions, and I want to be respectful of the Members who are here

and who have not asked questions.

Okay, so we have—anybody on the second panel ask any questions yet? Okay. My good friend from California, Sam Farr.

Go ahead, Mr. Farr. Do you have any questions for the second

panel?

Am I correct, the panel has been introduced by the prior chairman?

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, thank you. This panel is sort of the onthe-ground panel, people that really understand what the impact is

both in what I call the windfalls and wipe-outs.

And I would just be interested in their sharing with me their

concerns of where those gaps are. I pointed out that in—that we

do have some provisions in the law, the OEA law, 10 USC Section

2391(b)(2), allows for OEA, assuming they have the funding, to provide construction assistance beyond planning grants and gets into

building infrastructure.

And pointed out that we also were—before BRAC, the Congress

appropriated money for the King’s Bay Naval Submarine Base in

Georgia and put millions of dollars into the community specifically

to build schools under this community impact assistance, known as

the CIA, program within OEA.

And I just wondered if any of you received any assistance under

that particular provision and how critical is it for you to receive

that in order to have a smooth growth or a smooth closure.

Dr. DEEGAN. Well, one of the things that has happened is we

have been talking to OEA—actually, we did a survey for OEA.

61

They asked us to kind of go around and survey all the schools as

to what their needs were, and how they were going to address—

and how many kids they were receiving.

And then when we got that all back, they said, ‘‘Well, we are

going to go back and have a—now we are going to revisit those

communities.’’ So we have had a good working relationship, but we

don’t know where the end of the road is.

We don’t know if they are actually going to come up with any

money, or a plan, or what they are going to do. Basically, there is

a lot of talk but yet there is no actual dollars for anyone.

Mr. FARR [continuing]. The Association of——

Dr. DEEGAN. Military Impacted Schools.

Mr. FARR. Impacted schools.

Dr. DEEGAN. Right.

Mr. FARR. What about on declining enrollment, the other way,

where they are leaving the area, and you have an impact because

now the school has been receiving impact aid——

Dr. DEEGAN. Right. That is also a serious——

Mr. FARR [continuing]. Cut it off. You have still got the same

sized school district, same budget.

Dr. DEEGAN. Yes, and the only thing that—helps us is that we

get impact aid always like in arrears, so as you get the money, you

will get it one year after you could have sized down.

That will help you a little bit, but that in no way buys out all

your contracts, pays off all your facilities or gets it done. So that

is a major area.

But to be honest with you, all these heavily impacted schools are

so concerned right now with getting schools in versus the BRAC effect. That is just another part of what is going on. Within our

group, we don’t see as much of that immediately. But it is very serious.

I mean, once you make all those obligations and you have all

those facilities, what do you do?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Farr, in response to your question, while OEA

has been there for the state of Maryland—I am the lieutenant governor of Maryland—in terms of funding for planning and studies—

they have funded aquifer and other water treatment studies; they

have funded some of our planning positions, looking at workforce

issues, looking at transportation issues—we have yet to have a discussion with them about construction-related dollars.

And I certainly look forward to those discussions, because as was

mentioned in the panel this morning with the school impact aid

coming in as a trailing component, it does put mission growth communities like Maryland and some of the other states at a little bit

of a disadvantage to be able to build those schools without the assistance of the Federal Government.

But I will say that, you know, we in Maryland really understand

that states have a tremendous responsibility to accommodate the

growth and development associated with base realignment and closure.

We are going to benefit tremendously, as will other states, with

the employment opportunities, great families coming to Maryland.

So we continue to build schools. We continue to build roads.

62

We continue to work with our Federal delegation to get our fair

share of funding in all of those areas. But to date, while OEA has

been there for us for planning dollars, we haven’t even had a discussion about construction dollars.

Mr. HOULEMARD. Mr. Farr, I think it is important to note that,

in general, the Department of Defense provides mechanisms for

bridging the gap between either a closure or an assignment for

growth, but often is limited by the amount of resources that go to

the Office of Economic Adjustment.

And you have just heard of two certain circumstances. The references that you have made to law are only one of multiple opportunities that the Department of Defense has for bridging the gap

that occurs right after a closure happens or an announcement

about a growth.

And so as the Association of Defense Communities, we would

support additional resources that would help communities to bridge

these gaps until they are able to provide the support and help to

the military on their own.

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Forbes.

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And once again, we thank all of our witnesses for your patience

with us and through the voting process that we just encountered.

Mr. Houlemard, as I understand it, you—and we apologize that

we didn’t get to hear all of your previous comments, so I may be

repeating something that you have said.

But it is my understanding that your organization represents

both people who—or groups that have benefitted from BRAC and

those who have not benefitted from BRAC, and yet you note that

as a whole your membership does not really support changes to domestic bases outside the BRAC process.

Is that true? And if so, maybe you could give us a little explanation of why you think that is not a good idea.

Mr. HOULEMARD. Yes. In amplifying the comments I made before, Congressman, I think it is important to note that most of the

communities that are impacted by BRAC immediately begin a process of planning that is essential for them to look forward into the

future and to figure out appropriate recovery mechanisms that will

solve problems for their community that come from the big void

that occurs when a closure happens.

Many of these communities have already undertaken millions of

dollars of effort, sometimes with the support of the Office of Economic Adjustment, but in most cases at a considerable investment

of local money.

As a consequence of that kind of investment, they will come up

with bonding programs, new redevelopment programs, new reuse

programs that will help the communities to rebuild infrastructure,

to bring in new industry, or whatever it is that the local community looks forward to in order to recover from such a significant

economic impact.

If there were then changes that would occur in the process,

whether it is a closure community or a growth community, that uncertainty has the chilling effect on the financial markets, on the

local planning effect, on economic projections, as well as on how the

community perceives its future.

63

That detrimental kind of impact would have such an extensive

ripple effect across the Nation about what the potential would be

for other changes in a process that was considered to be done

under a certain set of rules that we think most communities would

negatively look upon that kind of conclusion.

Now, there are some instances where communities have asked

for delays. Mr. Grone mentioned earlier where certain communities

asked for additional delay in implementation in order to be able to

prepare.

We have had other circumstances where there were special circumstances where additional dollars were needed for certain

things.

But in general, to make a change and to then have that chilling

effect on what the communities have been planning and doing for

now over two years, our organization would not find that consistent

with the message we have given to communities over the years.

Mr. FORBES. One of the things that I think you had mentioned

before—certainty is one of the things that unites your membership

together, be they a benefitting community or one that is perhaps

not benefitting.

Does that certainty that you believe is so important it should

be—is that demonstrated to apply to BRAC funding itself?

In other words, how does the timeliness of BRAC funding impact

your assessment of the level of certainty demonstrated by Congress, for example?

Mr. HOULEMARD. BRAC funding has been the source of the funding that provides for everything from environmental remediation,

to costs associated with planning, to costs associated with completing the work for infrastructure.

All of the items associated with closed installations or growth installations are coming out of the BRAC fund account. It has been

our experience, sir, that where there are a lack of resources you

wind up with a problem associated with transfers.

You probably have often disposal issues that carry long-term impacts for the Federal budget as well as the local community’s ability to do their transfer and reuse.

So one of the things—the string that ties all of our communities

together is an engaging effort with the services and DOD to make

sure that, working with Congress, resources are made available

through the BRAC account or other allocations for our local communities.

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Deegan, just one last question. You have talked,

I know, a lot in our absence and in your statement about impact

funding and all, I am sure, as well.

But some rural communities have indicated that their bonding

capacity is not sufficient to absorb an influx of additional dependents without Federal assistance.

Could you just maybe elaborate on some of the difficulties of

their experiences?

Dr. DEEGAN. The idea of bonding capacity in a smaller community is a critical one because there is only so much money you can

come up with.

And then the question becomes not only what can you come up

with, but how much are you willing to come up with as a bond for

64

a military to come into your area, because there is a number of

people who would be questioning whether they should pay that

bond or have that responsibility versus the Federal Government

having the responsibility.

As far as the BRAC account goes, our discussions have always

centered around, you know, if communities had the resources, they

would do it. They would find a way.

But quite often, you have communities that the chamber of commerce welcomes them, cheering, parades, crowds—come on in—and

then the school or the service agency has to turn around and say,

‘‘Well, there is no money. We are going to plan. We are going to

talk. But there is no money.’’

So what you have done is Congress has authorized a bridge funding system. A couple years ago, a few years ago, you authorized a

bridge system where we could have a little bit of money to help

hire at least the teachers.

So we hope that—you know, we got $7 million one year, $8 million the other. The sad truth is this year there is zero funding in

it. One of the years that we need it the most, there is no money.

So we hope to be able to get at least $15 million back in that

account and to be able to deal with that bridge funding, because

that eliminates tons of problems.

It still doesn’t address the facility needs, but a lot of those facility needs can be addressed under the impact aid program if they

just put the money there.

So you know, in Congress there is a tendency to create programs,

where I think we ought to just fund the one that is designed to do

it, and that is impact aid, and then use this bridge funding to get

through this process, and then it will—eventually, the need will go

away and we won’t need it.

Mr. FORBES. Okay. Thank you.

Dr. DEEGAN. Thank you.

Mr. FORBES. Mr. Chairman, I would yield back.

Mr. ORTIZ. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone.

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to address

my questions to Mr. Ferlise since he is the Fort Monmouth witness.

But, Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to reiterate again, because I

appreciate your having this committee hearing, and I am hoping

that we can have another one, the problem that those of us representing Fort Monmouth face is that at the time of the BRAC we

presented from the community statistics that were very exact about

how the actual cost of this move was going to be twice what the

Pentagon predicted, that the actual number of people who would be

willing to move to Aberdeen, Maryland were only 20 percent, as opposed to, you know, the great majority that were represented by

the Pentagon.

And we did, in fact, certify that. Mr. Ferlise said that that material was, in fact, certified and properly sent to the BRAC. And the

BRAC was very concerned because, you know, our presentation

was very much at odds with what the Pentagon was saying.

And that is why they came down with this compromise asking

that this report be issued about whether or not the closure would

negatively impact the global war on terror.

65

The frustration that we have, Mr. Chairman, is that now the

Pentagon essentially admits all the things that we said were true

and that the GAO has essentially confirmed all that data.

And so we are saying to ourselves, ‘‘Well, if what we said is true

and what the Pentagon said was not true, then why is it that we

are proceeding with the closure?’’

Why is it that, you know, this report that is supposed to come

out doesn’t become the vehicle, if you will, for this committee to

look and take another look and say, ‘‘Well, perhaps this was the

wrong decision to make,’’ because everything that we said was true

turns out to be true?

And we are just looking for a vehicle to get that across. And you

know, Mr. Ferlise basically said that in his testimony.

And I guess what I wanted to ask Vic, though—and that this.

The larger issue, the reason for all this controversy, and the reason

why we presented all this alternative data was because we were

convinced that the closure of Fort Monmouth would negatively impact the global war on terror.

We wouldn’t be able to proceed with all the things that the communications and electronics command does at Fort Monmouth if 20

percent of the workforce—if only 20 percent moved, if all these additional costs were put into place.

And now when I listen to Mr. Grone, he basically said—well, I

mean, I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but essentially he

said to me, ‘‘Well, that is all very nice, but we have a much larger

mission here at Aberdeen Proving Ground. We are going to do a lot

more.’’

He said, ‘‘The move to Aberdeen isn’t just about replicating the

functions at Fort Monmouth. It is about creating something we

don’t have today, something new.’’

Now, I never heard that before. And now I am afraid that with

all our criticism this is now morphing into something that was not

represented to the BRAC at the time.

And so my question to you is, you know, what do you say? In

other words, is this transfer going to be possible? Can you reconstitute the Fort Monmouth workforce without disrupting support to

the global war on terror?

And what is it that he might be talking about here that is larger

than life and much more important than what we do now? Because

I have no clue, if I could ask you that.

Mr. FERLISE. A number of issues in there, Mr. Chairman. First,

I want to talk about the certifications he referred to this morning.

And I think his point was the community certification was outside

the process.

My testimony this morning was that I certified it internally in

response to BRAC questions. Twenty-two questions were posed by

the BRAC, including question seven about the money. They were

posed in June of 2005.

On July 14th I personally certified all of that data, and that data was for $1.44 billion, not $700 million, and that data was transmitted to the Department of the Army, and I am sure it went to DOD

ultimately.

I don’t think Mr. Grone realizes that, listening to him this morning, but I can tell you and I can show you the documents where

66

internally we stayed within the certification process, and I signed

those documents.

More than that, the cost of the use maps move was initially identified as $20 million, $22 million. In June of 2005, a 1391 was presented by West Point saying cost would be $220 million.

This also was data that was never given to the BRAC Commission until much later, actually in December, four months after the

decisions were made.

I also cite the Federation of American Scientists, and I am going

to quote them. They are an organization that was formed at the

time of the Manhattan Project, and they are highly credible. They

are nonpartisan. They are nongeographical.

They say there is firm evidence that some Pentagon officials—

some Pentagon officials, not all—deliberately misled the BRAC

Commission, thereby deceiving the President, the United States

Congress and the rest of the Department of Defense and the American public.

I believe that statement is true. Their reference is to data from

the joint cross-service working group that was suppressed. I believe

if all of that data had come out it would have been clear that this

decision was baseless.

So I have to say that some of the comments that I made earlier

today—I know you weren’t here, so if it is okay I will just repeat

and tell you where I am coming from.

Mr. PALLONE. Go right ahead.

Mr. FERLISE. I am coming from supporting warfighters. That is

what I am about. What you heard just now is that the costs were

understated. I have told you I certified the correct costs. Those did

not go to the commission. Somebody should answer for that.

Now, I knew those numbers would be dramatically different than

what was being used, so I took the additional step from Fort Monmouth of asking for Army Audit Agency to do an independent review before I signed this document.

I was told that they were directed not to audit those numbers.

Now, I don’t know why they were directed. I can guess why they

were. I had my internal auditors audit the numbers, and then I

certified them.

When I listened to the Secretary of the Army’s testimony, it just

doesn’t make sense. He said, ‘‘I want to consolidate you with your

test ranges.’’ Well, the C4ISR test ranges are at Fort Huachuca,

Arizona. They are not at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

There are test ranges there for vehicles and guns and things like

that, not for C4ISR. They are at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and at

Fort Dix where we have a live test bed.

But what disturbed me most from what I heard this morning,

after 29 months, three members asked, ‘‘Well, what is it good that

is going to come out of here?’’ And I didn’t hear an answer. There

was no answer to—look, we are going to tell you what it is pretty

soon.

Well, the answer is there is no good answer. At Monmouth, we

are looking at the national inventory control point for electronics,

55,000 different items that are managed there, Research and Development (R&D) there, logistics support is provided there.

67

So if I take you to the theater, that is half of the Army’s entire

inventory. One of the two things you touch in that theater come

from Fort Monmouth, either R&D or sustainment-wise.

So if you went to the theater, and I am sure some of the members have, and you rode in a vehicle, it had Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Baton (FBCB2) for situational awareness in it.

That is from Fort Monmouth.

It had Blue Force Tracking. It had radios. Most importantly, it

had jammers of one type or another—the Warlock family of

jammers, the Duke family of jammers, all protecting our soldiers.

And I heard something this morning also about why we couldn’t

re-look at this decision because—words like it would be hard, or it

would be destabilizing. We are talking about the lives of soldiers.

I just, in September, went to the funeral of a soldier from Toms

River, a Marine who was killed by an IED, and the hurt and pain

on his family’s face is something I will not forget. To think that

that has happened 2,000 to 3,000 times where we lost soldiers and

lost others for other reasons is unthinkable.

For us to take any risk at all in disturbing what is the nerve center for IED countermeasures and electronics—this battle of electronics is a battle of intellect and engineering. We are engaged in

it full speed. We have excellent people.

You will hear people say other organizations are doing IED work.

And you know what? They are doing IED work because it is such

a traumatic issue for our warfighters. It is a national issue.

But every one of those groups is headed by an engineer from Fort

Monmouth. Why is that? Because that is the undisputed center of

excellence.

Sustainment—more than 30,000 systems in the field for ground

protection.

In the aircraft, if you flew in an aircraft in theater, you had

jammers on that aircraft. You had radios on that aircraft. You had

the airborne version of FBCB2. A whole range of—all of the avionics on those aircrafts comes from Fort Monmouth.

Eleven general officers, all retired, with decades of C4ISR experience, came up on the Net and said, ‘‘This is a mistake. It will be

immediate detrimental impact to the force. Don’t make this move.’’

That was ignored.

Commissioner Coyle, the only commissioner that understood

C4ISR, attempted to explain to the members why you shouldn’t do

this. Ultimately he ended up being ignored, and he was the only

one that voted against the closure.

I stress that this IED business and the whole warfighter business is about protecting soldiers. And I heard this discussion of

what is hard—this is hard to do this.

And then one question was asked by Congressman Holt, ‘‘What

would it take in terms of impact for DOD to say let’s not do this?’’

And he kind of waffled a little.

I understand his position. He is coming here representing the department with the marching orders he has. But I submit to you as

being there for 36 years, the last 14 of which I oversaw everything

we did, this is a mistake that will cause us to lose lives.

And I know the members on this committee share the anxiety

over every loss of life. And I would ask you to use everything you—

68

all your power to look into this and reverse this decision so that

we don’t lose the intellectual capacity.

But more than that, it is not about jobs, it is not about people

lying about the money, it is about soldiers. Thirteen hundred times

a day a requisition comes to Fort Monmouth for support, three million times since 9/11.

And 9/11 is a good example of what I am talking about. Soldiers,

engineers and civilians went into New York City with the most advanced position locating equipment, stuff that came right out of our

classified laboratories. You can’t talk about it still.

And it was used in not only the Pentagon search and rescue but

also in New York. And at least a dozen different systems were used

in that.

So I would ask that this committee look at having another hearing and go through all of the facts that were really available in the

Department of Defense.

And why was Triple A directed not to audit those numbers? Why

did those numbers happen to be almost exactly the numbers that

DOD said? And I am going to tell you my opinion. It is because

they were the numbers, and they were known to be the numbers,

and that is not what we should be about.

To be perfectly frank with you, I am an attorney, and I was the

chief counsel at Fort Monmouth, and one of the things that I enjoyed about working for the government—and I hired many lawyers. I said the one thing we will never have to do is lie. We are

going to tell the truth.

I was dumbfounded when that certified data did not go forward.

It was just not in keeping with anything we did or learned.

Now, I talked about the American Federation of Scientists and

their view. The question is who knew it, who did it, who stopped

it. But the testimony of the secretary is just not credible, frankly,

as to what his reason was for making this recommendation and

fighting so hard for it.

Yes, sir?

Mr. ORTIZ. I wanted to ask a question of all of you, and maybe

you can respond. How many site visits did the members of the Base

Closure Commission make to your facility, if you can elaborate on

that?

Mr. FERLISE. Two.

Mr. ORTIZ. Two.

Mr. FERLISE. As I recall.

Mr. ORTIZ. And was this by all members——

Mr. FERLISE. No.

Mr. ORTIZ [continuing]. Or just a few members?

Mr. FERLISE. A few members.

Mr. ORTIZ. Anybody else?

Mr. BROWN. I don’t have any information on that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you. Thanks.

Mr. HOULEMARD. The committee conducted a hearing in my

home community of Monterey.

Dr. DEEGAN. We had none.

Mr. ORTIZ. See, this is the concerns of many—I can remember

when at least they came to my base that was shut down. I think

69

that we had two members who came separately to look at the—and

I was with them.

And one of the things that they asking me is if they wanted to

move, and they said no, we can’t afford to move to California because it is too expensive, and we can’t afford to buy a home, we

will be tied up in traffic for two, three hours a day, and we don’t

want to move.

Well, they didn’t want to move, but they moved them. And that

is what happened. And I think that this is very, very important,

the base closure process, and I think that this should have been

the responsibility of the elected Members of Congress, not to pass

it off to somebody else to do that.

But the thing is that whatever damage has been done, the Congress and the Senate voted for it, but your request that you have

made will not go unnoticed. You know, we will look into it and we

will, of course, advise the chairman of the committee, and he will

look into it and see what he advises to us.

But it is very serious, especially when we shut down bases when

we are in the middle of two wars, you know.

Mr. FERLISE. Absolutely.

Mr. ORTIZ. And then we have also a lot of hot spots around the

world, and we have a huge debt, and we are putting money here,

there and everywhere, and it is costing the taxpayers a lot of

money.

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Smith, do you have a question, sir?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. Go right ahead.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. I do appreciate it.

And let me ask—I would also like to ask Mr. Ferlise a couple of

questions.

And to you, Mr. Chairman, with the business report coming out,

the report from the DOD, I would again reiterate the request that

there be a follow-up hearing. You know, with every rule there is

an exception.

As I said in my opening, BRAC has done some very good things.

I have been involved in—you know, we have had some of our bases

in New Jersey put on the list. Some of them were changed, some

of them for the better.

But in this case, this is the most glaring exception I have seen

in my 27 years of a DOD blunder that is about to be, you know,

unfolded and implemented.

And I think, you know, with all due respect to our good friends

in Maryland, they will find very quickly that they won’t have the

personnel to train these individuals. Vic Ferlise makes that point

in his testimony.

And at the end of the day, this is all about the warfighter. It is

whether or not we pull the plug on a number of important missions.

Secretary Harvey, as you have pointed out, Mr. Ferlise, didn’t

even know what the mission was. And you know, he has got a lot

on his plate at the time. But when you misstate in a way that is

then reported upon, it just begs the question who is advising him.

70

You know, the fact that Mr. Ferlise just mentioned that that certified data that he himself—and let us underscore that—he himself

certified after his own internal audits did not make its way onto

consideration for the BRAC commissioners.

But three months later, on the BRAC Web site—because we went

to it and downloaded, as did others, I am sure—they had the certified data. It was like after the fact, ‘‘Oh, let’s get this on the Web

site real quick,’’ to somehow suggest that it was taken into due consideration, which we have every reason to believe it was not.

There needs to be very, very careful scrutiny given to this egregious decision.

I would like to ask Mr. Ferlise—you have called the loss of intellectual capital, which would be about 3,100 people and maybe

more, irreparable and irresponsible.

You said that the intellectual capital will be lost and not recovered for an intolerable period of time, if ever, which I think is a

very telling statement.

You point out that system experts take from six years to nine

years, if they are trained right out of college or soon after college,

four years to six years if they are in mid-career.

You also point out, and this needs to be underscored 1,000 times,

very few employees will be available to train the new employees.

So we will have a thud, a loss of capability, that will happen overnight or, in the terms of the DOD implementation, a few years, but

that is overnight.

And who gets hurt at the end of the day? Our warfighters. If you

could elaborate on this irreplaceable loss for the committee, because I think that begs the question as to why this needs to be

stopped.

Mr. FERLISE. I think in response to that question you need to understand first at least my view of what Fort Monmouth is.

It is a national treasure that we have that grew up in Monmouth

County, New Jersey. It grew up in the shadow of giants—Bell Laboratories, Sarnoff Laboratories. There was a time when they were

stealing my engineers—$25,000 bonus for anybody that could bring

an engineer from Fort Monmouth to them.

Bellcorp is there. Telcordia is there. And a whole raft of I.T. giants—AT&T is there.

So what you are looking at today in Fort Monmouth is a national

treasure that is not going to be readily replaced elsewhere, especially going to an area where there is no culture of C4ISR.

If you were to move to a place like Boston, where MIT is, and

a whole raft of institutions there, you might have a start at it. But

to move to a place with no C4ISR background is a recipe for disaster that only our soldiers will have to pay for.

So I think that intellectual capital will not be readily replaced.

The people will be replaced, but the ones that can figure out how

to deal with that particular jammer threat are not going to be

there.

Now, the jammers that we have in theater defeat about 80 percent of the threats. And to give you an idea of the magnitude, we

are talking about a threat—an actuating mechanism that has

changed more than 500 times.

71

Engineers at Fort Monmouth get that information through something called TEDAC and the FBI, and they immediately destruct

the device and figure out the countermeasures.

In fact, some of the countermeasures are already on the shelf anticipating where the physics will go next, if it is going into the infrared or the R.F. range, or what it is, so that we are anticipating.

The latest jammer that is over there is a software-defined

jammer that we can change—we can just change the software now

without redeploying the package. And when I talk about jammers,

I am talking about 30,000 are there.

Every Thursday morning I had to report to the four-star on how

many more had been fielded, how many more had been installed.

It was that critical of an issue. And it is obvious it is a critical

issue.

And to take that cadre of people and move them and risk this

loss is unthinkable to me. And I talk about IEDs—IEDs is a family

of equipment, but there are fire finders over there. There are lightweight counter-mortar radars that are over there—came from Fort

Monmouth.

The C–RAM, a spectacular device that shoots down mortars in

flight—in flight—70 percent hit rate—there is a whole raft of radars, radios, computers, all types of intelligence equipment coming

from there, totaling, as I said, one-half of the entire inventory of

national stock numbered items.

Mr. SMITH. If I could ask one final question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. You know, sometimes we—in my community—they

ask, you know, and I was just going to ask the governor, you

know—I know you do have some intellectual capacity, but it will

take more.

Do you think you have that capacity to draw, to bring them in

to your area?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chairman, I don’t think there is another state,

with all due respect, that has the fundamentals, the solid educational workforce training capacity that we have in Maryland.

I do agree that it will be a challenge with filling 70 percent of

the jobs or so with Marylanders. But our fundamentals are strong,

and there are some—there is some information I would like to put

in the record. It may not be in my written statement.

Fifteen percent of our workforce holds advanced degrees—that

we ranked number one in the country. Thirty-five percent hold

bachelor’s degrees. We rank number two in the country. Twentysix percent of our workforce are professional and technical workers.

We rank number one.

Our technology industries—and we do pride ourselves on both information and biotechnology and other emergent technology industries. Seventy-nine of every 1,000 private sector workers are in that

industry. That is the fifth-highest concentration.

We have national ranked, world ranked schools—Johns Hopkins,

University of Maryland, Baltimore College, to name a few. They

have been recognized as centers of excellence by the National Security Agency (NSA). We believe that they are well suited to educate

the workforce to meet the needs of the moving command.

We are making good use of an $18 million Federal grant to incorporate more STEM, science, technology, engineering and math, in

72

our middle and high schools. This is all part of keeping that pipeline of an educated and skilled workforce.

So while there are challenges, and I did identify that earlier

today as one of the three challenges I identified, which is workforce, we believe that Maryland is well equipped to address that

challenge, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, if I could follow up.

Mr. ORTIZ. I yield to my good friend, the chairman of the

Seapower Subcommittee and a very valuable member of this committee, Mr. Taylor, and then I will yield to you.

Mr. TAYLOR. I thank the chairman. Mr. Chairman, I never want

to miss an opportunity to say what an incredibly stupid idea the

whole BRAC process was. I think today’s hearing has confirmed

that.

But I have had requests from Congressman Rush Holt to have

some questions submitted for the record. I would like to ask unanimous consent to do so.

And I also would like to, since Congressman Pallone, who is not

a member of the committee, has some very valid questions—and I

get a lot of opportunities to ask questions, so with unanimous consent, I would like to ask that my remaining time go to Mr. Pallone.

Mr. ORTIZ. No objection. So ordered.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix beginning on page 224.]

Mr. PALLONE. I wanted to thank my colleague from Mississippi.

And I also wanted to stress that I agree with you. I voted against

all the BRAC. I think that the BRAC is—he used the term stupid.

I guess I will say the same thing.

I really think Congress should make these decisions. They

shouldn’t be made by the BRAC. And this is certainly another indication of why.

Mr. Chairman, my only comment and then question is this. My

concern right now is where do we go from here. In other words, the

Pentagon has told us from day one that they are going to issue a

report saying that it is okay to close Fort Monmouth.

They have also indicated to you today that they don’t even have

to issue that report, that they don’t feel they have any obligation

to. They are just doing it, I guess, to be nice.

I don’t buy that. I think the language is clear in the BRAC that

this report was to be submitted to the committees of jurisdiction,

of which, of course, this is one, because of the concern by the BRAC

that the closure of Fort Monmouth might negatively impact the

global war on terror.

So I am just hoping that when that report comes out by the end

of this month, and I fully expect it won’t be until the 31st of December, you know, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, that there will be

an opportunity, as the GAO said, to review it, but also for this committee to review it and, as Mr. Smith said, to have another hearing.

Because the fear we have is that the process all along has been

that the Pentagon wanted to do this closure without justification,

and that they have essentially rejected or even hid the data that

we provided that would have shown it was a mistake.

73

And so we have every reason to believe, based on what they told

us, that they are essentially going to whitewash us again with this

report. I mean, they told us that today, and they have told us that

previously.

So really, this is the only opportunity that we would have, is if

this committee follows up on it. So I just wanted to make that

clear, if I could.

And the only other question that I wanted to ask Mr. Ferlise—

and following up, again, on what I said before—you know, Mr.

Grone today basically came in and said, ‘‘Well, we are not necessarily replicating Fort Monmouth, we are doing something new.’’

And I don’t even know what he is talking about, and I just—I

don’t know if you had the time to address that or not. But you

know, for a long time, the purpose of this BRAC was supposed to

be, you know, purple-ization.

Mr. FERLISE. Right.

Mr. PALLONE. All that was thrown out. And basically we were

told all we are doing is replicating Fort Monmouth. So how does

he come in here now and say something new? What do you think

he is talking about?

Mr. FERLISE. I can’t imagine what he is going to say. As I said

earlier, you could have combined the three electronics commands—

very hard to do. You know, the people involved—very hard.

The engineers all work fine together. It is just when you get into

other issues——

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, if I could just interrupt, we were

told initially with the BRAC that the purpose of the BRAC was to

create purple-ization or joint forces, so theoretically, you know, you

have a Sea Command (SEACOM) at Fort Monmouth for the Army,

you had another one at Hanscom for the Air Force, you had another one in San Diego for the Navy.

And one of the things they were looking at was to combine these

all into one place. That was essentially rejected by the Pentagon,

and they said, ‘‘Well, all we are going to do is replicate the Army

one at Aberdeen.’’

And so I don’t understand, when they rejected that, now they are

saying, ‘‘Well, we are going to create something new here.’’ What

is it that is new? They basically said, ‘‘All we are doing is replicating the Army SEACOM. We are not doing anything else.’’

And now he comes in and suggests that somehow we are not

doing that. You understand that is the problem.

Mr. FERLISE. If I could respond——

Mr. ORTIZ. Yes, go ahead, sir.

Mr. FERLISE [continuing]. In 29 months they haven’t been able

to articulate that. I don’t have fear that they are going to be able

to articulate it next month.

It did start out with jointness. That was in the ‘‘too hard’’ box.

It then moved to, ‘‘Well, we will consolidate all similar Army C4ISR

functions.’’ Well, ARL is headquartered at APG, and they have a—

the only part of it that does C4 stuff is at Harry Diamond Labs.

That didn’t go.

The night vision lab from Fort Monmouth from seacom—it got

taken off at the last minute.

NADC was supposed to go. They didn’t go.

74

The only thing that is going is Fort Monmouth, seacom, and part

of that is being scattered to the winds.

I have to take one just pathetic note on that. So we didn’t do

joint cross-servicing. We didn’t consolidate within the Army.

We, in fact, took one organization that does all satellite terminal

work out of Monmouth. There is a satellite park there with every

single satellite replicated, and engineers and program management

people.

We are sending the satellite terminals to Aberdeen Proving

Ground and the people are going to Fort Belvoir. They are 100

yards apart right now. So not only did we not consolidate, we even

managed in this process to separate things that were working fine

together.

It just doesn’t pass the common-sense test.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, sir. We are about to have a series of votes

again.

Let me yield to my good friend Smith, and then we are—I think

we have held you hostage long enough here. But all of you have

made a wonderful presentation. You all have made some great

points.

And we are going to take all of this into consideration. We will

talk to the other members of the committee and I will work very

closely with my good friend, my ranking member, and work with

you.

But let me yield to my good friend, Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding and

again for including us on your panel.

Let me ask Mr. Ferlise a question with regards to—Phil Grone,

when he spoke earlier, mentioned 50th in terms of military value

as if he was dropping a bomb.

You addressed that in your written statement about the non-mission-related attributes, like environmental elasticity. Could you explain this fallacy? Because again, it has surface appeal, but as soon

as you dig away a little bit, it just—there is nothing there.

Mr. FERLISE. It is about maneuver ranges that he is talking

about. He is correct. We don’t have 50,000 acres there. But we have

Fort Dix with an enormous range. In fact, it has one of the only

tank ranges on the East Coast.

We also have Fort Irwin. We test at both of those places.

Mr. SMITH. And there is already jointness with those bases.

Mr. FERLISE. Yes. Correct. So you know, I think that is part of

the same story that we haven’t heard the end of yet. There is no

logic here. I can’t express it to you in a way that says, ‘‘This is good

for soldiers.’’

And I defy you to find somebody to come forward and say, ‘‘This

is the best thing we have done for the warfighter.’’ I don’t care

about money. I don’t care about people in Monmouth losing jobs.

Nobody says that, because it is absolutely not true.

In 29 months they couldn’t even articulate something that could

pass a straight-face test.

And the other thing I want to say is in that 29 months since that

caveat came out, not one single step has been taken to protect that

workforce. There are things that could have been done—retention

75

bonuses for people, all kinds of other things. None of that has been

done.

That report should address what have you done in the last 29

months. Every one of those 29 months I can tell you people have

left Fort Monmouth. They have gone to the joint base. They have

gone to Picatinny. They have gone to industry. They have gone all

over. But you just can’t sit by and let that happen.

Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand where we came from before I retired. We did everything we could to bring people from

Maryland. We recruited routinely at Maryland because we wanted

to get those people up here, train them, and then hopefully they

would want to move back to Maryland.

So when I was in government service, I viewed myself as executing the law, and I am going to do everything I could. And they will,

too. But I can tell you the people at Monmouth are committed to

doing whatever the law is because warfighters need it, not because

of money, not because of jobs.

The bottom line on every document you ever got from Fort Monmouth said, ‘‘Our bottom line is the soldier.’’ People in industry ask

me, ‘‘Why do you say that?’’ Their bottom line is money. Ours isn’t

money. Ours is taking care of those soldiers, wherever they are in

the world, and doing whatever we have to do.

I will give you one more example. I realize we are a little long

on time, sir. Blue Force Tracking. I got a call from the Pentagon

six months before we went into Iraq, ‘‘How many teams can you

give me to field Blue Force Tracking in the theater, all the vehicles

are there already?’’

Took me about two hours. I called him back, the G–6 of the

Army. I said, ‘‘You have a blank check. If you want one team, I will

give you one. You want 10, I will give you 10. You want 100, we

will give you 100 teams.’’ In short, we will do whatever we had to

do.

And Blue Force Tracking got into the tune of 1,200 vehicles and

saved lives. The tank battalions that crossed in Baghdad saw each

other because of Blue Force Tracking, saved lives. And that is what

you got there.

You have a national treasure, and we can’t let it just go by.

Mr. SMITH. Finally, Lieutenant Governor Brown, Phil Grone said

earlier that details in the report that will be released later this

month will include mitigation of any loss of intellectual capital.

And I am asking you sincerely. You went through, you know,

people’s resumes. And you know, we could do the same thing and

say we have this kind of capability, you know, we will put it up

in a brochure.

But when it comes down to people who have a very specific expertise that has been learned over the course of several years, do

you see—and again, the use of the word mitigation—we use the

word mitigation when you are talking about toxic waste cleanup.

You know, you lessen the risk.

As Phil just mentioned a moment ago, you know, no one is saying this is a good thing. They are saying it is not necessarily a bad

thing. And I am wondering, do you have any concern, any whatsoever, that there is a risk to the warfighter because of this move?

76

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Smith, my concern is that in Maryland we are

doing what we can do each and every day to support the

warfighter, and that is what we are committed to doing.

Some of the steps that we have taken, recognizing that often the

employee looks to a spouse in helping make that decision whether

you move—we have set up one-stop shops at Fort Monmouth for

spousal employment and transitional services.

We have set up the same thing outside of the gate at Aberdeen

Proving Ground to facilitate that communication, to continue to

identify those needs, to get those percentages as high as we can do.

That is what our focus is on, bringing as many people with the

jobs so that we——

Mr. SMITH. I understand. Is there anything in Mr. Ferlise’s testimony, which I think just lays out this case—if this was going to

court before a jury, I think it would be a unanimous jury that this

is a foolish move, casting no dispersions whatsoever on Aberdeen

nor on Maryland.

But just based on intellectual loss, the capacity of people to do

this job in the midst of a horrific war—you know, so my concern

is did you hear anything in what Mr. Ferlise said that would persuade you that there is some caution here, that there is some risk

that has gone underappreciated by some?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Smith, that is somewhat out of my lane. All I

can tell you is that what is in my lane is making sure that we invest in the human capital and the physical infrastructure in Maryland so we can accommodate the arrival of families and jobs, and

we are doing that each and every day.

And I have met with the leadership at Fort Monmouth. I have

heard their concerns. We have heard their concerns, as well as at

Aberdeen Proving Ground. And each and every day we commit ourselves to addressing those concerns. And we know it is a challenge.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you so much. I know that the Members who

were here with us today are very sincere, you know, in representing their communities. And I think that we had some good stories,

good testimony, today.

We will share this information with the rest of the full committee. And I just want to thank each and every one of you for participating and being some outstanding witnesses today.

And I can assure you that we will try to see if we can solve some

of this mystery, because there is a lot of people still out there who

are a little confused.

But thank you so much for joining us today and being outstanding leaders in your community.

And, Governor, thank you so much for being with us.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ORTIZ. And now this hearing stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:56 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

DECEMBER 12, 2007

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

DECEMBER 12, 2007

(81)

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

DECEMBER 12, 2007

(175)

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

RECORD

DECEMBER 12, 2007

(209)

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ORTIZ

Mr. ORTIZ. One of the things that we have been trying to get from the Navy is

their implementation program. We have been asking the Navy to give us a copy as

to how they are going to make their plan work, their implementation.

Do you think that, before you leave, you might be able to help us get the Navy

to give us this plan?

Secretary GRONE. The Department of Navy provided a redacted copy of the business plan of record to Chairman Ortiz.

Mr. ORTIZ. In March 2004, the Department indicated that it had 24% excess infrastructure. As a percentage of the overall enterprise, how much did the Department

actually reduce their overall footprint with the BRAC 2005 process?

Secretary GRONE. The Department’s recommendations were projected to result in

a Plant Replacement Value (PRV) reduction of 5.1 percent. After the Commission’s

independent review produced a revised number of recommendations, the Department’s PRV projection was reduced to 3.4 percent. The Department’s overall PRV

is impacted by a variety of factors such as demolition/disposal, non-BRAC construction, and Grow the Force initiatives that would have to be considered in reviewing

the post-BRAC end state.

Mr. ORTIZ. Has the Department made a determination as to funding primary and

secondary education requirements for communities impacted by BRAC recommendations?

Secretary GRONE. The Department continues to rely upon state and local government to fund local hard (construction) and soft (overhead and maintenance) education requirements. In some instances, DoD supplemental impact assistance, in addition to impact aid, has assisted with some of the soft expenses of educating military dependent children.

We also recognize that some affected communities, in conjunction with their

states, lack sufficient resources to fully respond to the education requirements that

arise with this growth. Through the President’s Economic Adjustment Committee,

we are collaborating with the Department of Education to undertake federal team

visits to some growth locations with student impacts to better understand local capacities and tailor responsive Federal assistance.

At the same time, DoD is working with the Department of Education to assess

the viability of forward funding Impact Aid vice the current practice of funding

based on the student count from the previous school year with funds normally arriving in Winter/Spring of the following year. As pointed out at the hearing, this is

especially problematic for school districts experiencing significant growth in one

year.

Local education is the jurisdiction of the State and local government; however, the

Department of Defense (DoD) has a vested interest in quality education for military

families. The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), which has provided military students with an exemplary education for over 60 years, received expanded authority in the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal

Year 2007 to create educational partnerships with local education agencies who educate military students. Launched on October 1, 2007, the DoDEA Educational Partnership Directorate (EPD) has begun to: (1) develop partnerships with schools and

districts that focus on educational best practices, seamless transitions, and deployment support services, (2) facilitate agreements at the local and state levels to positively impact military children’s education and wellbeing, and (3) extend opportunities for student learning via online and other research-based models.

Moreover, the Department is using its influence to help build productive relationships with States and Federal Agencies to create policies that help Local Education

Agencies (LEA) expand and construct schools and help communities provide educational opportunities that help meet the needs of military families.

An important, recent outgrowth of this DoD effort has been the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children, which addresses the educational transition issues affecting military dependent students because of frequent

moves and deployments. While properly deferring to state prerogatives in education

policy, the Interstate Compact transcends state and local boundaries to create uniVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00213 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
210

form standards of practice for identified transition issues like the transfer of

records, course placement, graduation requirements, redundant or missed testing,

entrance-age variations, etc. Based on recent research and best practices, the Office

of the Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness in cooperation with the Council

of State Governments (CSG) developed the Interstate Compact. It becomes effective

once ten states sign it into law. DoD is currently seeking legislation for it in 54

states and US territories. In 2008, 25 states will review it, of which at least 10 have

already filed bills to enact it.

Mr. ORTIZ. Is the Department’s 78% execution rate of BRAC 2005 funds in fiscal

year 2007 indicative of the difficulty that should be expected in implementing the

recommendations of the BRAC commission? Is the Department expecting similar

difficulties in executing the fiscal year 2008 increment of funding?

Secretary GRONE. Seventy-eight percent execution on a $5.6B appropriation received nearly seven months after the fiscal year started is an exceptional achievement. To the extent the Department receives its funding in a timely manner, we

will be able to execute the resources consistent with our plans.

Mr. ORTIZ. With greater transparency, the BRAC implementation costs have increased. In retrospect should the BRAC process have built-in additional methods to

increase cost accuracy?

Secretary GRONE. The BRAC statute provides that we treat all bases equally in

a limited amount of time. Cost increases are not a question of transparency; rather

the nature of the analysis. This precludes us from doing more detailed planning and

conducting the site surveys that are necessary to support detailed budget quality

submissions. As was done in the past, the requirements for equal treatment and

limited time for analysis make it necessary for the Department to rely on the use

of cost estimating tools such as the Cost of Base Realignment Actions (COBRA)

model.

The COBRA model is a tool for comparative, consistent, and auditable analyses

of a variety of options using standard factors applicable during the timeframe within which the BRAC analysis was conducted. As such, COBRA was not designed to

produce budget quality estimates. For instance, in arriving at its comparative assessments, COBRA displays financial information in constant dollars which are unaffected by inflation. Revised cost and savings estimates, supported by the detailed

planning and site surveys necessary to support budget submissions, were not conducted during the BRAC process.

A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report supports the utility of

COBRA. In this report, the GAO stated: ‘‘we have recognized in the past and continue to believe that COBRA is a reasonably effective tool for the purpose for which

it was designed—to aid in BRAC decision making—and that the BRAC Commission’s COBRA-generated estimates are the only reasonable baseline to use to identify BRAC cost and savings changes since the recommendations became effective.’’

Mr. ORTIZ. The Department is still trying to finalize the implementation details

of several recommendations including joint basing. Why has the Department not finished determining how to implement all the BRAC recommendations? What is the

monetary cost of delaying implementation of these remaining recommendations?

Secretary GRONE. With over 200 recommendations, there are only a handful that

have yet to be finalized. Those include three Chemical Demilitarization recommendations that are tied to treaty obligations, and 12 Joint Basing recommendations that are tied to policy decisions now being made (the Department is developing

guidance to establish a comprehensive framework for joint basing implementation).

There are a few others pending that involve personnel transfers and siting issues

that the Department continues to work through. We will realize savings even

though we are still in the planning stages with these recommendations.

(Since the time of the hearing, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued guidance

on Joint Basing on January 22, 2008.)

Mr. ORTIZ. According to GAO and DOD the 2005 BRAC round is supposed to

bring about military transformation and increased jointness. Are you seeing these

results?

Secretary GRONE. Yes, BRAC is a catalyst for transformation and will increase

jointness. The Department is on the glide path to achieve what the recommendations were set out to do. A few examples include:

Æ Creation of a Defense Media Agency at Fort Meade supporting DODs public affairs mission.

Æ Establishment of joint medical operations in the San Antonio and National

Capitol Region.

Æ Realignment of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). This reduces total facilities from 30 to 10 sites, accomplishes a major facilities reduction and business line realignment, and transforms the current DFAS organizaVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00214 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
211

tion into an optimum configuration, to include strategic redundancy to minimize risk associated with man-made or natural disasters/challenges.

Mr. ORTIZ. Is BRAC an appropriate vehicle for military transformation?

Secretary GRONE. Absolutely; absent BRAC authorization, existing statutes preclude us from making significant changes to the base structure. Any significant

force restructuring requires changes to the supporting infrastructure and without

BRAC this is not possible. The BRAC process focuses our functional personnel

(Training/Operations/Medical, etc.) to objectively and systematically look at their

force structure and compare it to the base structure.

Mr. ORTIZ. The Department non-appropriated fund mangers have identified 42 non-appropriated fund construction projects costing over $737 million that are validated as restationing or BRAC requirements that are currently unfunded. Of that

list, 31 projects at a cost of $496.8 million are related to Army installations. How

is DOD planning to address restationing and BRAC implications of these projects?

Will appropriated funds be found to support this construction so that service member non-appropriated funding can be reserved for routine construction and renovation?

Secretary GRONE. We have a structured process for reviewing projects, to include

their source of funding. Every project that has been validated as a BRAC requirement has already been or will be funded through BRAC. Those that are not validated BRAC requirements will compete for funding in the normal budget process.

Mr. ORTIZ. Are you aware of the letter from Senator Inouye regarding the need

to use appropriated funding to support commissary construction at restationing and

BRAC impacted installations? Apparently, the letter received a great deal of attention and resulted in the reconsideration of plans to use non-appropriated funding

to support commissary construction projects at Fort Riley and Fort Bliss. What is

the current status of the construction projects at Fort Riley and Fort Bliss? What

affect has the letter from Senator Inouye had on the DOD attitude regarding the

use of non-appropriated funds to support restationing and BRAC related construction projects?

Secretary GRONE. Every project that has been validated as a BRAC requirement

has already been or will be funded through BRAC. The Ft. Riley and Ft. Bliss commissary construction projects are being reviewed to determine their eligibility in

whole or in part for BRAC funding or for normal MilCon.

Mr. ORTIZ. Is the BRAC recommendation to close Fort Monmouth conditional?

Secretary GRONE. The closure of Fort Monmouth is legally required and unconditional. This is not, as some would contend, a ‘‘conditional closure’’ that may not

occur because a report cannot be written but of how the move will occur without

disruption to support of the Global War on Terrorism and other critical contingency

operations. Fort Monmouth can be closed, and its functions relocated, without jeopardizing support for warfighters in the field—the BRAC Commission agreed with

that conclusion.

Mr. ORTIZ. Is the report to Congress required?

Secretary GRONE. The BRAC Act requires the Department to close and realign all

installation so recommended by the Commission. The BRAC Act does not require

DoD to submit reports recommended by the BRAC Commission, or follow any other

Commission recommendations that are not either base closures or realignments. It

is therefore the Department’s position, as reflected in its filings in the United States

District Court for the District of New Jersey, that there is no legal requirement, in

the BRAC Act or elsewhere, that DoD submit the report to Congress that the BRAC

Commission recommended, although DoD nevertheless intends to submit such a report by the end of this year.

(Since the time of the hearing, the report was provided to the Committees of Jurisdiction on December, 28, 2007.)

Mr. ORTIZ. Where did the certified data that supported the closure of Fort Monmouth originate?

Secretary GRONE. The certified data was provided by Fort Monmouth and the Department of the Army.

Mr. ORTIZ. Did the Department provide all the certified data to the Commission

on the Fort Monmouth recommendation?

Secretary GRONE. All certified data, classified or unclassified, for all recommendations was provided to the Commission and Congress.

Mr. ORTIZ. There have been complaints that DoD suppressed internal papers/data

from the BRAC Commission. Specifically, that there was information in the Technical JCSG report that was withheld. Was information suppressed in the Technical

JCSG final report submitted to the Commission?

Secretary GRONE. All certified data, classified or unclassified, was provided to the

Commission. As the Department was finalizing release of the BRAC 2005 recVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00215 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
212

ommendations, there was concern that the vast amount of data collected and

arrayed could provide a national security threat when aggregated in a central or

easy to access manner (e.g., website, report).

The Technical Joint Cross-Service Group (TJCSG) Chair, Dr. Ron Sega, pulled

back his report to the Secretary (the longer 496 page document dated 10 May 2005)

and reviewed it in light of the security concerns. He determined that the array and

summary of the capacity analysis (Appendix A) conducted by his group could expose

sensitive information to the public. He, therefore, directed his group to revise the

appendix in a manner that would relate the results of the capacity analysis while

protecting the sensitive information. The revised appendix was incorporated into

Volume XII of the DoDs final report and submitted to the Secretary of Defense on

19 May 2005. While it is unfortunate that the transmittal memo date was not modified to reflect the actual date transmitted to the Secretary, the report was accurately dated to reflect when it was submitted into the DoD security review process.

It is important to note that the data Dr. Sega’s group used during the course of

the capacity analysis was never altered nor withheld from the Commission. Following a thorough security review of the capacity data, all of the capacity data that

the Department used, including that generated for the TJCSG, was deemed unclassified. As a consequence, the capacity data in a disaggregated form was made available to the public on both DOD’s and the BRAC Commission’s website in June 2005,

where it resides today.

Mr. ORTIZ. Was the Commission bound by statutory data certification requirements?

Secretary GRONE. The Commission was not bound by the statutory data certification requirement. It could, and did, ask for anything additional it deemed necessary—its representatives visited the installation and it heard testimony from community witnesses. Further, the local community took advantage of its ability to supply the Commission with data directly.

The Commission’s record demonstrates it had access to a variety of data when it

made its closure recommendation to include information on potential cost increases

(Reference: Commission hearings of May 18, 2005; July 8, 2005; and, August 24,

2005 as well as material on the Commission website drawn from visits to Ft. Monmouth). Attached are documents obtained from the Commission website.

The Commission carefully scrutinized the recommendation to close Fort Monmouth and the majority supported its closure. It is important to note that the Commission modified this recommendation by retaining night vision at Ft. Belvoir (vice

relocating to Aberdeen). This is clear evidence that the Commission could have

changed this recommendation and reverse the closure recommendation if it saw

fit—and it did not.

The Commission voted 7 (yes), 1 (no), and 1 (abstention) to close Fort Monmouth.

Æ James Bilbray—No vote

Æ ADM Harold Gehman—abstained

Mr. ORTIZ. With the substantial cost increase for implementation, does the action

to close Fort Monmouth still save?

Secretary GRONE. Yes, implementation will save over $154M annually beginning

in FY 2012, reducing infrastructure overhead, even with the cost growth. The payback period for this recommendation, using the Cost of Base Realignment Actions

(COBRA) model’s methodology, is ten years. While this is five years longer than the

original COBRA estimate, the implementation costs will still be recouped in a reasonable amount of time and, more importantly a significant benefit will be achieved

by consolidating the C4ISR (command, control communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) community, and research and test elements at one installation.

Mr. ORTIZ. Was the community and/or opponents to the closure of Fort Monmouth

provided an opportunity to communicate with the Commission?

Secretary GRONE. The Commission could, and did, ask for anything additional it

deemed necessary—its representatives visited the installation and it heard testimony from community witnesses and received information from personnel at Fort

Monmouth. Further, the local community took advantage of its ability to supply the

Commission with data directly, both at hearings and in other correspondence. The

BRAC Commission library has documents that clearly indicate the community provided input on all of the topics raised (e.g. loss of intellectual capital, costs, and disruption to mission).

Mr. ORTIZ. Why is the Department closing Fort Monmouth and moving to Aberdeen Proving Ground?

213

Secretary GRONE. Ft. Monmouth is an acquisition and logistics installation with

little capacity for other purposes. The Army ranked it 50th of 97 installations in

military value.

Moving research, development and acquisition capabilities from Ft. Monmouth

and other locations (Ft. Knox and Redstone) allows the Army to concentrate these

capabilities at Ft. Belvoir and Aberdeen as part of its transformational goal of

achieving Network Centric Warfare. This goal requires access to test and evaluation

ranges which do not exist at Ft. Monmouth. Additionally, new construction at Aberdeen allows physical and organizational reorganization that is not possible at Fort

Monmouth.

Moving the United States Military Academy (USMA) prep school currently located

at Ft. Monmouth to West Point increases efficiency and enhances coordination in

this key officer corps-training program.

Moving the logistics functions to Columbus, OH and Aberdeen, MD is an important part of the larger BRAC effort to increase efficiency by consolidating procurement management. Implementation will save over $154M annually beginning in FY 2012 even with

the cost growth, by reducing infrastructure overhead.

Mr. ORTIZ. The Technical JCSG ranked Monmouth higher than Aberdeen for Information System Development and Acquisition (Monmouth ranked #2 and Aberdeen #41) and Research, (3 for Monmouth vice 11 for Aberdeen). If that is the case,

why didn’t the functions get moved from Aberdeen to Monmouth?

Secretary GRONE. The Army, in consultation with the Technical Joint Cross-Service Group (TJCSG), examined a number of factors to make its decision including the

raw military value scores cited in your question. Together they believed that the

best decision, using their military judgment, was to consolidate functions at Aberdeen which has access to test ranges and could accommodate the consolidation of

many activities. The consolidation specifically enables the Army to establish a Land

Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR). Life Cycle Management Command at an installation that has

access to ranges. This decision comports with the Technical JCSG strategic goal of

establishing integrated C4ISR centers.

As stated in the Secretary of Defense justification ‘‘The closure of Fort Monmouth

allows the Army to pursue several transformational and BRAC objectives. These include consolidating training to enhance coordination, doctrine development, training

effectiveness, and improve operational and functional efficiencies, and consolidating

Research, Development, and Acquisition (RDA) and Test and Evaluation (T&E)

functions on fewer installations. Retain DoD installations with the most flexible capability to accept new missions. Consolidate or collocate common business functions

with other agencies to provide better level of services at a reduced cost.’’

Mr. ORTIZ. Does the Department record reflect any disagreement with the decision to close Fort Monmouth?

Secretary GRONE. As was the case with all recommendations developed by the Department, there were a series of analyses, reviews and decisions that resulted in the

recommendation to close Ft. Monmouth. In the decision meetings, there is no record

of senior officials disagreeing with the decision. That said, there are certainly individual DoD employees who were privy to DoD’s recommendations that were free to

object to any decision with which they disagreed. These opinions were primarily expressed verbally. DoD’s recommendation development process encouraged open debate and discussion of alternatives. This is evidenced by the approximately 1200 closure and realignment scenarios that were evaluated by the Military Departments

and the seven joint cross-service groups during the deliberative process.

On occasion individuals did put their concerns in writing. For example, during the

course of its work, the Technical Joint Cross-Service Group (TJCSG) staff often used

issue papers to communicate personal ideas, views, etc., regarding the TJCSG process. Five such papers were authored by Mr. Don DeYoung. These were not deliberated on by the TJCSG principals. Since these documents were not a part of the

TJCSG deliberative record, they were not submitted to the Commission. In response

to a request from Senator Warner, the Deputy Secretary of Defense provided these

five papers to Senator Warner on 25 July 2005. It is unclear if the BRAC Commission knew these papers existed, but if they needed and requested them for their review, they would have been provided through the established Clearinghouse process.

Mr. ORTIZ. Has the Department captured the impact on ‘‘intellectual capital’’

when personnel with special skills choose not to relocate as part of a BRAC recommendation?

Secretary GRONE. Implementation of BRAC recommendations allows the Department to integrate relocated personnel to produce synergies and obtain new capabilities that actually enhance intellectual capital.

214

While changes in installation configuration produce turmoil, the Department, no

different than industry, must be allowed to balance the impact on intellectual capital with the benefits achieved through reconfiguring its infrastructure.

The Department has six years to implement BRAC recommendations, providing

ample time for managers to mitigate the impact of personnel turmoil.

The Department deals routinely with personnel changeover and will have programs in place to mitigate personnel impacts during implementation. Relevant examples from prior BRAC rounds include the movement of the Naval Air Systems

Command from Crystal City, VA to southern Maryland and the relocation of the

Space and Warfare Systems Command from Crystal City, VA, to San Diego, CA.

Mr. ORTIZ. What is DoD’s policy for funding QOL facilities as part of BRAC? Do

QOL facility availability need to coincide with the six year deadline?

Secretary GRONE. If the projects are required to implement the recommendation

they are funded as part of the BRAC effort. For example, the construction necessary

(and funded) to implement Commission Recommendation #10, Operational Army, includes two Child Development Centers, a Physical Fitness center, and a Youth Activity Center. Often times these types of projects fall into a gray area because they

accommodate BRAC and non-BRAC requirements. Additionally, military construction is not the sole means for addressing BRAC and non-BRAC requirements where

the private sector is a viable option for some requirements. For example, child care

needs to support the relocation/co-location of Investigative Agencies at Quantico will

rely on the private sector.

Mr. ORTIZ. Have you responded to the recent GAO report on Cost and Savings?

If so, would you please characterize them?

Secretary GRONE. Yes, the response was as follows:

‘‘The report accurately characterizes the Department’s viewpoint that, even

though the BRAC 2005 round is costing more and saving less than originally estimated in 2005, implementation of these recommendations are expected to enhance

defense capabilities as the Department reshapes and realigns forces to meet future

national security needs.’’

‘‘Regarding the increase in one-time costs between the original Cost of Base Realignment Actions (COBRA): FY05 constant dollar estimates and the estimates reflected in the FY 2008 President’s Budget, the Department agrees that the majority

of that increase is associated with funding Military Construction (MilCon) projects.

With approximately 70 percent of the BRAC 2005 FY08 President’s Budget allocated

to facilitize new capabilities, it is understandable that most of the increase would

be associated with MilCon.’’

‘‘The reasons for such increases, beyond inflation, include management decisions

to pursue new construction versus use of renovated space, use of site specific survey

assessments, and to accommodate changes in unit sizes, functions or responsibilities

by increasing facilities, changing configurations or building additional facilities. In

other cases, business decisions were made to enhance quality of life and training

infrastructure at installations receiving missions beyond those initially estimated by

COBRA. Specifically, the Army added approximately $2 billion to improve training

ranges, consolidate reserve centers, for child care and other quality of life facilities

and in support of medical facilities.’’

‘‘The Department concurs with the GAO assessment that the original COBRA

model estimates, while valuable as a comparative tool, do not provide estimates that

the Department is expected to use in formulating the BRAC budget against which

Congress will appropriate funds. Specifically, the Department’s experience is such

that the combination of actual on-site surveys and better definition of requirements

contributed to MilCon cost increases as the more detailed implementation planning

process progressed.’’

‘‘Regarding the treatment of annual recurring savings, the Department considers

military personnel reductions attributable to a BRAC recommendation as savings

that are as real as savings generated through end-strength reductions. While the

Department may not reduce overall end-strength, the reductions in military personnel for each recommendation at a specific location are real. As is the case of monetary savings, personnel reductions allow the Department to re-apply these military

personnel to support new capabilities and to improve operational efficiencies. In this

context, savings from military personnel reductions are real savings. However, the

Department acknowledges that these savings may not be available to fund other Defense priorities because they have already been spent to fund military personnel priorities.’’

‘‘Finally, in spite of the fact that net annual recurring savings (ARS) have decreased from $4.2 billion to $4.0 billion, as indicated in the report, the Department

emphasizes that the ARS still represents a significant benefit that will result from

successful implementation of these recommendations.’’

215

1GAO, Military Base Realignments and Closures: Estimated Costs Have Increased and Estimated Savings Have Decreased, GAO–08–341T (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 12, 2007). 2GAO, Military Base Realignments and Closures: Cost Estimates Have Increased and Are

Likely to Continue to Evolve, GAO–08–159 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 11, 2007).

Mr. ORTIZ. DOD’s estimates of the cost to implement its BRAC recommendations have increased by $10 billion to date. What is GAO’s assessment as to why estimates increased? In what areas might costs increase in the future?

Mr. LEPORE. Our analysis shows that DOD’s estimates of the cost to implement

the BRAC recommendations have increased from the 2005 Defense Base Closure

and Realignment Commission’s (the Commission) estimates in 2005 1 to those in

DOD’s fiscal year 2008 BRAC budget request for the following four reasons.

• Military construction: Estimated military construction costs accounted for about 64 percent, or about $6.5 billion, of the increase in expected one-time costs. Specifically, the Commission estimated that to implement the BRAC recommendations, military construction costs would be about $13 billion, whereas DOD’s estimates for military construction presented in the fiscal year 2008 budget submission, without inflation, were about $20 billion. Military construction costs increased because of changes in assumptions or plans between when the original

recommendations were developed and approved in 2005 and when DOD submitted its fiscal year 2008 budget justification materials. For example, the military

construction cost for the recommendation to close Fort Monmouth, New Jersey,

increased by more than $550 million due to the decision to build new facilities

rather than renovate existing facilities in some cases at Aberdeen Proving

Ground, Maryland, and build new facilities rather than share existing facilities

at West Point, New York, to accommodate the U.S. Army Military Academy

Preparatory School. Additionally, the military construction cost for the recommendation to consolidate the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort

Belvoir, Virginia, has increased by nearly $350 million, in part because the

agency identified the need for additional supporting facilities, such as a technology center and additional warehouse space.

• Inflation: Inflation accounted for about 25 percent, or about $2.6 billion, of the

increase in expected one-time costs. This occurred because the Commission presented its estimates using constant fiscal year 2005 dollars, which does not include the effects of projected inflation, whereas DOD’s budgeted estimates were

presented in current (inflated) dollars.

• Environmental clean-up: Environmental clean-up added about 6 percent, or about $590 million, in expected one-time costs. The Commission’s estimates did

not include projected environmental clean-up costs for BRAC-affected bases,

which is a consistent practice with past BRAC rounds because DOD is required

to perform needed environmental clean-up on its property whether a base is

closed, realigned, or remains open.

• Other costs: Finally, other projected expenses such as operations and mainte- nance accounted for about 5 percent, or about $500 million, to the increase in

expected one-time costs. Because the Commission’s data do not include some

specific budget categories that are used in the DOD BRAC budget, we could not

make direct comparisons and precisely identify all estimated cost and savings

changes.

Based on our work to date, we have identified three areas where expected costs

may continue to evolve. First, as we reported in our December 2007 report,2 the details for implementing several key recommendations had not been decided when

DOD submitted its fiscal year 2008 BRAC budget request. For example, expected

costs to realign Walter Reed Army Medical Center could increase if the time frame

to complete the implementation of the recommendation is accelerated, as recommended by the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s independent panel to review

current rehabilitative care at Walter Reed. Additionally, expected costs to relocate

miscellaneous Office of the Secretary of Defense, defense agency, and field activity

leased locations to Fort Belvoir are likely to change—either increase or decrease—

as the Army is considering alternative sites in Northern Virginia for about 6,000

personnel.

Secondly, if the Army’s newly implemented efforts to transform and streamline its

process to manage and contract for military construction do not produce the anticipated savings, military construction costs could increase because a majority of the

Army’s projects already include a 15 percent reduction of cost into its cost estimates.

The Army is expected to incur almost 60 percent ($12 billion) of the estimated

BRAC construction costs. Finally, environmental clean-up costs are preliminary and

could increase. However, as bases where property is to be disposed undergo more

216

3 H.R. Rep. No. 109–504, at 46 (2006).

4GAO–08–159.

complete and in-depth environmental assessments, a clearer picture of environmental clean-up costs will likely emerge, as has happened in prior BRAC rounds.

Moreover, environmental clean-up costs can be incurred after the implementation

of BRAC recommendations is complete in 2011 and costs after 2011 are not presented in the BRAC budget.

Mr. ORTIZ. BRAC is affecting many communities across the nation and DOD has

the Office of Economic Adjustment to assist these communities financially in the

form of planning grants. Are these costs reflected in DOD’s current $31 billion cost

estimate?

Mr. LEPORE. DOD’s cost estimates to implement the 2005 BRAC round do not include the Office of Economic Adjustment grants provided to communities affected

by BRAC actions. While these costs are incurred by the federal government, they

are not funded through the BRAC account.

We are currently undertaking work directed by the House Committee on Appropriations in the report accompanying the 2007 defense appropriations bill 3 looking

at the combined effect of various rebasing initiatives, including BRAC, overseas rebasing, and modularity, on the communities surrounding bases that are receiving

a large number of personnel. Specifically, we are looking at the economic impact—

both positive and negative—on communities surrounding growth bases, the challenges they face in providing for additional infrastructure to help support the military’s needs, and the extent to which federal agencies, including agencies outside

DOD, have assisted communities in planning for and financing this growth. We expect to issue the report in the spring of 2008.

Mr. ORTIZ. In your statement you mentioned that the 2005 BRAC round is the

biggest and most complex BRAC round to date. Based on the size of this BRAC

round, should Congress be concerned about DOD being able to complete all of these

actions within the 6-year statutory time frame?

Mr. LEPORE. While DOD has more than 3 years remaining to implement the 2005

BRAC recommendations, we raised two challenges in our December 2007 report that

increase the risk that DOD might not meet the statutory deadline for implementing

recommendations by 2011.4 First, we reported that DOD faces challenges in synchronizing BRAC actions, including synchronizing personnel movements with construction. Additionally, part of this synchronization challenge is that some installations are affected by multiple recommendations. For example, Fort Belvoir, Virginia,

is affected by 14 separate recommendations and 27 installations are affected by 6

or more recommendations. Moreover, some recommendations are dependent on the

completion of others. For example, DOD cannot begin renovating facilities at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, to accommodate personnel from the closure of Fort

Monmouth, New Jersey, until the training activity currently occupying the Aberdeen facilities relocates to a new facility being built for them at Fort Lee, Virginia,

which is expected to be completed in 2009. At that point, the Army can begin to

renovate existing facilities at Aberdeen Proving Ground for the move of organizations from Fort Monmouth.

Second, we reported that DOD faces challenges related to coordination among

multiple services and agencies—43 percent of the 240 business plans involved formal coordination between at least 2 services or agencies. For example, there are several potential issues between the Defense Logistics Agency and the military services

that may affect the planned implementation of the recommendation to realign supply, storage, and distribution management and, while baseline agreements have

been reached on the transfer of supply-related personnel positions and related inventories to the Defense Logistics Agency, some aspects of the implementation

plans, such as performance-based agreements that establish responsibilities and

metrics to measure performance, are incomplete. As a result of these coordination

challenges, the planning process has lengthened beyond what DOD initially expected, which could result in delayed implementation of certain recommendations.

Mr. ORTIZ. In your statement you provided several examples where costs, particularly military construction costs, have increased significantly. Do these recommendations still achieve savings?

Mr. LEPORE. Six recommendations make up one-half of the expected military construction cost increases. Our analysis of DOD’s fiscal year 2008 BRAC budget data

indicates that three of these recommendations will still achieve savings within 20

years and three will not achieve savings within 20 years. This data may change

with DOD’s submission of its fiscal year 2009 BRAC budget.

217

5The 20-year net present value is a financial calculation that accounts for the time value of

money by determining the present value of future savings minus up-front investment costs over

a specified period of time. Determining net present value is important because it illustrates both

the up-front investment costs and long-term savings in a single amount. In the context of BRAC

implementation, net present value is calculated for a 20-year period from 2006 through 2025. 6GA0, Defense Infrastructure: Challenges Increase Risks for Providing Timely Infrastructure

Support for Army Installations Expecting Substantial Personnel Growth, GAO–07–1007 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 13, 2007).

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to relocate the

Army’s armor school from Fort Knox, Kentucky, to Fort Benning, Georgia, to

support the creation of a maneuver school has increased by nearly $670 million,

or 128 percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $133 million per

year after implementation, for a 20-year net present value savings of $63 million.5 The Commission estimated 20-year net present value savings of $948 million.

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to close Fort

Monmouth, New Jersey has increased by more than $550 million, or 125 percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $154 million per year after

implementation, for a 20-year net present value savings of $381 million. The

Commission estimated 20-year net present value savings of $1.1 billion.

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to realign the

Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia and relocate

medical care functions to the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has increased by almost $440 million, or 61

percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $172 million per year

after implementation, for a 20-year net present value savings of $251 million.

The Commission estimated 20-year net present value savings of $831 million.

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to move various DOD activities from leased space to Fort Belvoir and Fort Lee, Virginia has

increased by more than $500 million, or 124 percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $72 million per year after implementation, for a 20-year

net present value cost of $359 million. The Commission estimated 20-year net

present value savings of $256 million.

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to consolidate

medical enlisted training and establish the San Antonio Regional Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, has increased by almost $540 million, or 71

percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $91 million per year

after implementation, for a 20-year net present value cost of $468 million. The

Commission estimated 20-year net present value savings of $476 million.

• The estimated military construction cost for the recommendation to consolidate

the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has increased by nearly $350 million, or 37 percent. DOD estimates this recommendation will save $35 million per year after implementation, for a 20-year net

present value cost of $1.4 billion. The Commission estimated 20-year net

present value savings of $535 million.

Mr. ORTIZ. In your assessment, has the Department been able to provide accurate

forecasts to gaining installations that coincide with community infrastructure?

Mr. LEPORE. In September 2007, we reported that expected personnel movement

numbers differed between Army headquarters and the bases where these people

would move at several locations, thus affecting whether adequate infrastructure

would be in place when personnel arrive.6 As of March 2007, the nine bases we visited were expecting different numbers of personnel arrivals and departures than

those generated by Army headquarters. While these nine installations are not necessarily representative of all Army growth locations, they could nonetheless lead to

unnecessary infrastructure improvements on some bases or inadequate improvements on others and under- or overbuilding of community-funded infrastructure off

of the installation by surrounding communities.

We are continuing to evaluate this issue in our ongoing work reviewing the effect

of various rebasing initiatives, including BRAC, overseas rebasing, and modularity

on the communities surrounding bases that are receiving a large number of personnel. We expect to issue our report in the spring of 2008.

Mr. ORTIZ. With regards to GAO’s observations on the Department’s commitment

to using appropriated funds to support the construction of facilities for non-appropriated fund activities at sites impacted by restationing and BRAC, what are the

DOD policies regarding the use of appropriated funds to support non-appropriated

fund construction and has the Department demonstrated a commitment to those

218

7GAO–07–1007.

policies? Has the Department of Defense adequately accounted for the facility requirements of non-appropriated fund activities at installations impacted by restationing and BRAC decisions?

Mr. LEPORE. We have not specifically reviewed DOD’s use of appropriated funds

to support non-appropriated fund construction on a widespread basis. However, in

September 2007, we reported that because of expected budgetary pressures and

competing priorities, and to limit short-term construction costs, the Army plans to

delay construction of certain quality of life facilities at some gaining installations.7

Quality of life facilities include child development and youth centers, physical fitness centers, chapels, on-post shopping and convenience areas, and athletic fields.

BRAC recommendations do not require specific construction projects, and thus the

Army has chosen to defer some quality of life facilities beyond 2011 at various

BRAC locations.

Mr. ORTIZ. How is the local community planning on reuse?

Mr. FERLISE. I am not closely involved with the re-use issue but I know the Fort

Monmouth Economic Revitalization Planning Authority has been established and

regular meetings and planning is on going. Additionally I would recommend you

contact John G. Donnelly, Policy Advisor, Office of the Governor, State of New Jersey, P.O. Box 001, Trenton, NJ 08625–0001.

Mr. ORTIZ. How effective is the Department’s relocation assistance in helping impacted employees?

Mr. FERLISE. I have been retired for one year so do not have current knowledge

which would permit me to comment on this question.

Mr. ORTIZ. There have been some reports that many employees do not intend to

relocate to the gaining installations. Can you characterize the impact on the mission

if sufficient employees do not relocate?

Mr. FERLISE. If adequate numbers of employees do not relocate to Aberdeen Proving Ground the impact will be catastrophic on warfighters and the Army. The Commission heard testimony from Major General (Retired) William Russ, the former

Commander of CECOM as well as Commander of the Army Signal Command, where

he had responsibility for every signal brigade in the Army, with 17,000 soldiers and

civilians world wide. He stated unequivocally that he was certain that a re-location

of the magnitude contemplated in this case, would have a direct, immediate and catastrophic impact upon the mission performed by Team C4ISR and the Warfighter.

He was joined by 10 other retired General Officers in a letter to the Commission

in which they pointed out that the proposed relocation to an area devoid of any real

connection to the C4ISR mission was a destructive proposal. I need to take a minute

to explain the C4ISR mission that Fort Monmouth is engaged in before answering

further. In his initial testimony before the Commission, former Secretary of the

Army Harvey stated that the activities at Fort Monmouth are strictly ‘‘R&D’’ and

‘‘Strategic’’, and that moving them and sustaining a loss of personnel of 74% would

not have immediate impact on the Warfighter. He was absolutely mistaken on this

point, as more than 50% of the Army’s National Stock Numbered items (60,000) currently in the field are acquired, managed and sustained through Fort Monmouth.

Fort Monmouth is inextricably engaged in supporting the deployed forces in Iraq

and Afghanistan and around the world and performs critical functions in equipping

divisions and brigades preparing to re-deploy and modularize. Fort Monmouth has

been on a war footing every day since 9/11, with 24/7 operations. The impact of what

CECOM does to develop, acquire, field and sustain critically needed systems to enhance operational effectiveness and maximize the safety of our Warfighters has immediate, real time consequences RIGHT NOW, while they are in the field. These

systems include Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force

Tracking to prevent fratricide in battle; Duke, to provide force protection against

Improvised Explosive Devices; the FIREFINDER and Lightweight Counter Mortar

Radar Systems, to identify incoming artillery and mortar rounds and provide

counter fire; Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar (C–RAM), to intercept and destroy

incoming projectiles; counter mine equipment; and missile warning systems, just to

name a few. Additionally, Team C4ISR is involved in the development and fielding

of classified ‘‘quick reaction’’ systems involving the National Security Agency.

EVERY ONE OF THESE SYSTEMS AND MANY MORE, OPERATE 24/7. Mr. ORTIZ. Are communities able to provide sufficient education facilities to support the 50,000 dependents expected to relocate as a result of BRAC 2005?

Dr. DEEGAN. No. Most of the relocation, as I understand it, will be focused on approximately 11 military installations. Many of these school districts are at or near

capacity. An average elementary school holds 500–600 students; a middle school

800–1,000 students; and a high school approximately 2,000 students. It would take

219

multiple schools at each installation to accommodate the tremendous movement

that is being discussed. The cost of one new school could range anywhere from $12

million (for an elementary) to $50 million (for a high school)—cost may vary by area.

It takes planning and funding to accommodate this large an influx of students.

Once the funding for a new school is in place, it takes approximately six months

to develop the architectural plans and bid the project, and a minimum of two years

to actually construct the school. There is only $17 million included in the Impact

Aid program for the construction needs of over 1,200 school districts (Indian lands

as well as military).

Some schools have had to purchase trailers and old business buildings to accommodate the new students—and many times the class size is greater than other districts in order to accommodate all of the students.

Mr. ORTIZ. Some rural communities have indicated that their bonding capacity is

not sufficient to absorb an influx of additional dependents without federal assistance. Could you explain some of these difficulties?

Dr. DEEGAN. School districts that serve military installations typically have more

than 20% of their property removed from the tax roles. These school districts do not

have enough bonding capacity to address the construction needs as a result of

BRAC, Global Re-basing, and Army Modularization. While the state realizes some

of the economic benefits of a military installation, the local school district, which

typically receives funding through property taxes and business personal property

taxes, could have 20% or more of their funding removed—the business (military installation) is tax exempt, businesses located on the military installation (Burger

King, Commissary) are tax exempt, and millions of dollars are lost as a result of

the military personnel, through the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, who register

their automobiles in their home state.

How can a community be encouraged to vote for a bonded debt for 20 years on

a project when the military may not be there that long or the installation could have

a substantial cutback in troops? The locals have a limited tax base and all the responsibility.

Mr. ORTIZ. Closing installations—how are school districts responding to a decrease in federal assistance?

Dr. DEEGAN. The funding that was available through the DoD Impact Aid program has assisted schools that are experiencing changes as a result of BRAC. In

addition, Impact Aid is paid one year in arrears. If a student enters the school district after January 15, it will be two years before the school receives any funding

for that student. What will bridge that gap? Where will the funding come from to

pay for the teachers, textbooks, etc.? What else will suffer if funding is not found?

As it relates to BRAC, school districts need time to reduce staff, honor contract

obligations and to pay for equipment and facilities that have been added to meet

the needs of children from the installation. Currently funding is for one year in arrears. What is needed is a gradual reduction in federal funding over a three year

period to help school districts work through the challenges and survive the impact

of BRAC.

Mr. ORTIZ. How are communities responding to installations that have gained increased missions?

Mr. HOULEMARD. Immediately after the 2005 BRAC recommendations became

law, growth communities formed planning groups to prepare for an expanding population. These organizations have been instrumental in educating their respective

communities about the impacts of mission growth. With the assistance of the Defense Department’s Office of Economic Adjustment and the Department of Labor’s

Employment and Training Administration, the groups are creating strategic plans

to accommodate the influx of soldiers, sailors, airmen, scientists, engineers, and mission support contractors. State level organizations have also been created to assist

communities with mission growth planning. Growth communities and states are

eager to support local installations and anxious to welcome the arriving missions.

For example, numerous communities are holding ‘‘road shows’’ to recruit civilian

DoD workers whose jobs are being transferred.

As communities complete their growth plans, funding to implement these plans

becomes the highest priority. Most communities, especially rural ones, face overwhelming financial challenges to fully support such a large influx. While this

growth may generate additional funds for state and local governments, any such

revenue will significantly lag behind the need for improvements. Also, these revenues lack the certainty to finance needed infrastructure. Direct assistance—in the

form of assurances, loans, grants, or a combination thereof—from federal and state

governments is essential. Otherwise growth communities will be thwarted in bridging the funding gap to meet initial military growth infrastructure requirements.

220

Mr. ORTIZ. The Government Accountability Office has indicated that the Department was having difficulty in accurately assessing the number of personnel and dependents that gaining installations were receiving. How is this impacting your associates’ ability to provide community infrastructure?

Mr. HOULEMARD. For several months following the BRAC decisions, most growth

communities were having difficulties ascertaining the number of personnel and dependents assigned to their area. Since accurate population numbers are essential to

community infrastructure planning, this hindered communities’ efforts to accurately

plan for mission growth.

Recently, however, communities have stated that they have received more accurate and timely data from the military services. This has greatly assisted their ability to plan for mission growth.

One cause for concern, however, in addition to general uncertainties about scheduling, is the recent announcement by Secretary Gates that several brigades from

Europe may not be returning to the United States as planned. Changes in planned

movements, such as the return of overseas troops, create numerous problems for

growth communities. As communities plan for infrastructure improvements, many

times they must issue bonds to finance those improvements. Many growth communities are pledging their full faith and credit in bonds to prepare for the growth.

The chance that brigades may not arrive on time, and that the growth will be delayed, places the community in a risky situation. When new residents do not arrive,

then tax revenues will not increase, which will, in turn, place communities in risk

of defaulting on their bond obligations.

Of course, there is a moderate level of uncertainty when planning for such a large

influx of new residents and communities understand they need to be flexible to accommodate the growth. However, if changes do occur, they must be informed in a

timely manner. ADC hopes that the military services will keep local officials updated on the numbers of troops, airmen, sailors and contractors expected to move

to their communities.

Mr. ORTIZ. Are gaining communities able to sequence the construction of community infrastructure with actual arrival of military personnel?

Mr. HOULEMARD. For most growth communities, the growth has yet to begin.

Therefore, this question is more difficult to answer. Until new missions arrive in

gaining communities, it will be difficult to assess the success of communities’ planning efforts.

The process of constructing new infrastructure or adding to existing infrastructure

takes years. Communities can only respond if they can start the process now. Many

growth communities are struggling to finance the necessary infrastructure to accommodate the wave of new residents and are not confident that new schools, roads,

environmental infrastructure and other needs will be in place in time. The result

could be problematic with overcrowding and service disruptions to soldiers and families, similar to those that occurred at some installations in the 1980’s.

On the other hand, several communities believe they are in better shape to host

the thousands of new arrivals expected. They have plans in place to address many

infrastructure needs and have identified sources of funding to complete at least

some of the work. Even these communities cannot say with certainty that they will

be ready in time. However, due to the lack of precise estimates of the level of new

personnel moving and the timing of their arrival, the long lead time required to

complete construction projects and regional labor shortages in the construction industry.

Mr. ORTIZ. The State of Maryland stands to receive an additional 60,000 employees as a result of BRAC 2005. What challenges confront the State when faced with

such a significant impact?

Mr. BROWN. The relocation will generate the single largest job growth in Maryland since the end of World War II. While poised to reap the tremendous benefits

of BRAC, Maryland also faces some challenges posed by the expansion. The State

has begun efforts to address these obstacles, and will continue to seek innovative

and effective solutions to ensure a fully successful transition. As Maryland prepares

to accommodate the thousands of relocating employees and families, the State must

use this unusual opportunity to plan for growth by thinking through the full ramifications of where it should occur.

With the level of growth anticipated from BRAC, the State must confront its limited land resources and rein in land consumption by promoting Smart Growth. Controlling sprawl will enable the State to ensure that sprawl will not compromise the

integrity of our infrastructure, our ability to sustain BRAC growth or our cherished

quality of life.

Despite the State’s superior transportation network, the substantial increase in

workers and residents relying upon the transportation system will strain its current

221

capacity. Because the system must be able to accommodate these increased demands, the State will not only have to augment capacity for existing modes of transportation, but will also have to engage in innovative planning and judicious decision-making with respect to the allocation of resources.

Maryland is fortunate to enjoy a low unemployment rate which, at 3.8%, is well

below the national average. While generally a positive sign of Maryland’s healthy

economy, it sounds a cautionary note that the State may need more employees to

fill the jobs generated by BRAC. Moreover, many of the jobs associated with the

military installations and the BRAC transition generally will require specialized or

technical training. The State must, therefore, ensure that it establishes adequate

workforce development and education programs capable of producing a pipeline of

future workers with the skills necessary for BRAC-related employment.

Mr. ORTIZ. Has the Department provided sufficient information to coincide the arrival of employees with State infrastructure expansions?

Mr. BROWN. The commands that are realigning, as well as the military installations within the State, are in communication with the State, providing the State

with the latest employee movement information. In addition, the Governor’s Subcabinet on Base Realignment and Closure, under the guidance of Lieutenant Governor Anthony G. Brown, have met on several occasions with the commands based

in Ft. Monmouth in New Jersey and the Defense Systems Information Agency based

at Ft. Myers in Virginia, to dialogue with military officials about their planning

needs and activities. The Subcabinet intends to have regular meetings with these

commands as the BRAC process continues to ensure accurate and effective communication exchange between the realigning capabilities and the State. Within Maryland specifically, both Governor Martin O’Malley and Lieutenant Governor Anthony

G. Brown have met with the base commanders at Fort George G. Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground to foster a working relationship between the gaining installations and their host state.

Through the Maryland Military Installation Council (MMIC), Maryland has developed a state-wide strategy to address the BRAC 2005 decision. In addition, the military alliances throughout the state, which are composed of business partners that

have a direct relationship with the various military installations, have become an

invaluable conduit for information from the installations and continue to exemplify

the public-private partnership that makes Maryland’s BRAC planning efforts successful.

Mr. ORTIZ. The State has organized a regional partnership to address the increase

in personnel that is rather unique in the overall management of BRAC 2005. How

has the composition of the partnership allowed the State to address overall BRAC

management?

Mr. BROWN. The Governor’s Office on Base Realignment and Closure was created

through State of Maryland legislation to horizontally integrate among state departments and vertically coordinate between state and county agencies to ensure a successful transfer of military personnel as mandate by the BRAC 2005 decisions. The

Subcabinet is composed of nine State departments including; Department of Business and Economic Development, Governor’s Office of Minority Affairs, Maryland

Department of Planning, Maryland Department of the Environment, Department of

Housing and Community Development, Maryland Department of Transportation,

Maryland State Department of Education, Maryland Higher Education Commission,

and the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

The Local Government Subcommittee was first convened on August 20, 2007 to

supplement the planning actions of the Subcabinet and to vertically integrate the

State, county and local BRAC initiatives. This group has served to create a designated point of contact at both the county and municipal level within in each county to ensure that communications and coordination among State, county and local

agencies take place efficiently and effectively.

The Subcommittee is composed of county representatives from each of the nine

affected jurisdictions, including Baltimore City, as well as, municipal representatives from one town or city in each county. The Subcommittee meets monthly to discuss BRAC-related planning issues. To more effectively achieve this goal, the Subcommittee has convened four working groups; Education and Workforce, Public

Safety, Transportation, and Land Use and Infrastructure, which meet and serve to

focus the Subcommittee’s efforts. To assist the Subcabinet in the development the

State’s BRAC Action Plan, the Subcommittee coordinated with local jurisdictions

which provided advice in identifying and prioritizing BRAC-related projects and

evaluations studies. This information was submitted in a report to the Subcabinet

which evaluated and incorporate portions in the State Action Plan. As the State continues to progress with the BRAC process, the Local Government Subcommittee will

222

remain an important resource to assist the Subcabinet as ‘boots on the ground’

through the plan’s implementation.

Mr. ORTIZ. How is the state managing the community infrastructure to support

the Maryland installations? Specifically address roads, housing, medical facilities

etc.

Mr. BROWN.

Transportation

The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) has a strategy to support

Maryland’s military installations, focused on short-term and long-term improvements. In the short-term, MDOT has identified intersections surrounding Maryland’s installations, most significantly impacted by BRAC growth. A $139 million

program has been created to fund improvements to those high priority intersections,

providing additional turn lanes, capacity and geometric improvements, intended to

maintain service levels. These projects are targeted for completion by 2011. The

Maryland Transit Administration continues to study potential new transit services

to implement by 2011, as well. In the long-term, MDOT will continue to develop

larger, higher capacity projects (highway and transit) which will serve the bases as

well as other regional needs.

Overall, Maryland currently has $1.7 billion programmed over the next six years

for 31 projects improving access to BRAC-impacted bases, within both the 2008–

2013 Consolidated Transportation Program and Maryland Transportation Authority

capital program. In December, the Maryland General Assembly approved a $450

million annual increase in revenues for MDOT’s Transportation Trust Fund, which

supports the operating and capital needs of the department. This increase will provide for investments in transportation going forward, such as the intersection program and the MARC Growth and Investment Plan. Expanding MARC will enhance

transit access in central Maryland, serving Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving

Ground. In support of the MARC plan, $200 million was programmed to acquire additional rolling stock and to make line improvements.

Housing

Maryland does have a variety of resources and tools for households and communities to respond to affordable/workforce housing needs. The Department of Housing

and Community Development, which is Maryland’s housing and community development finance agency, manages nationally recognized programs to help individuals

and communities prosper. The Department administers a range of mortgage and

down payment assistance programs and participates in financing the construction

of affordable rental housing opportunities for seniors, families, and individuals with

special needs through a range programs that leverage federal, State, local and private resources. In fiscal year 2007, DHCD helped 3,900 households buy a home and

financed 2,800 rental housing opportunities.

The Maryland Mortgage Program, which has competitive mortgage rates, a variety of mortgage products, and range of down payment assistance options, is an important tool in DHCD’s BRAC response. Particularly efforts related to the mortgage

program will include incorporating BRAC businesses into the ‘‘House Keys for Employees’’ program which matches down payment assistance provided by participating

businesses to their employees. The program is enriched by its Smart Growth incentive—‘‘Smart Keys’’—which provides additional down payment assistance if the participating household lives within 10 miles of their employer or within the same

county.

In addition to the homeownership activities, rental housing is also a focal point

of DHCD activities. It is projected that 14% of BRAC households will be renters.

DHCD will use the compendium of rental tools it has available and prioritize resources for BRAC to provide for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable

rental housing. Rental housing can take a variety of forms and will be primarily

needed for households with family members employed in lower paying BRAC jobs,

as well as jobs in the service sector or that provide support services to BRAC related

businesses.

While enhancements to housing programs will serve to assist direct and indirect

populations in need of housing assistance, DHCD’s neighborhood revitalization programs will play a key role in shaping the location and quality of BRAC-related

growth. DHCD’s investment programs provide critical resources to spur redevelopment to support residential opportunities as well as revitalize commercial corridors

and older retail shopping centers that provide key services for BRAC households.

Through Maryland’s Main Street Program, as well as flexible grant programs such

as community legacy, Maryland is seeking to ensure that BRAC growth and housing

market activity are connected to areas where there is both need and capacity.

223

Planning (using Smart Growth principles)

To promote optimal use of the Maryland’s mass transit options, the State will consider the development of BRAC Zones that will provide incentives for both employers and workers to relocate to areas of the State, such as Baltimore City, with

ample, existing infrastructure and transportation capabilities. In keeping with a

main tenant of Smart Growth to accommodate and encourage growth without contributing to sprawl, BRAC Zones will also provide local jurisdictions with incentives

to enhance public infrastructure, such as streets, utilities and recreation venues, in

designated revitalization and redevelopment areas. These incentives will reduce development pressures outside Priority Funding Areas (PFAs), while motivating BRAC

employers and workers to relocate to desired areas.

Environment

The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is working closely with

local governments, reviewing each local BRAC action plan, and identifying those

items that require specific action by MDE. The agency is aligning its efforts to facilitate prompt MDE response to local government regarding water and wastewater infrastructure planning and, where desired, to assist in local efforts to reduce landfill

capacity through innovative approaches. In addition, MDE is prepared to work with

BRAC-related project sponsors (i.e. the Army or defense contractors) to ensure timely processing of environmental reviews that may involve air quality analysis, wetlands and storm water approvals, wastewater discharge permitting, Brownfields

clean-up or hazardous materials approvals. As part of its FY08 budget, MDE is investing over $118.5 million to enhance local ability to provide safe drinking water

and ensure adequate wastewater treatment protective of Chesapeake Bay and local

waterways throughout Maryland’s BRAC-impacted jurisdictions.

Healthcare

Maryland is in the middle of an ambitious multi-billion dollar rebuilding of our

hospital infrastructure, including the construction of new hospitals, the addition of

new patient towers to existing facilities, and the renovation and modernization of

hospital buildings. Maryland’s hospital certificate of need process is based on projected clinical needs, which are in turn based on projected population changes. Population changes associated with base relocations have been incorporated into our

planning estimates, assuring that there will be adequate hospital capacity throughout the state, particularly in those areas most affected by the BRAC process. Maryland’s professional licensure boards have evaluated licensing and reciprocity policies

to assure a smooth transition for health professionals relocating to Maryland as part

of BRAC.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO

Ms. BORDALLO. Were there savings on these closing the bases in Guam? Can I

ask you to provide the committee with the cost savings?

Secretary GRONE. There were savings associated with the BRAC 1993 recommendation to close Naval Air Station (NAS) Agana and the BRAC 1995 recommendations to ‘‘disestablish’’ the Fleet Industrial Supply Center, realign Naval

Activities Guam and Public Works Center (PWC), and close the Ship Repair Facility. As reflected in the FY 2008 President Budget Navy Justification Data submitted

in February 2007, total savings for the period 1996–2001 approximate $260M. The

annual recurring savings (ARS) beyond that period approximates $65M.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. BOYDA

Mrs. BOYDA. What savings are we trying to realize by not moving equipment

around and storing it? What savings—are we looking at what we can save, our

BRAC dollars, and use them for something else, if equipment is merely going to be

moved and stored to just leave it? Do you have any thoughts that you could share

with us on that?

Secretary GRONE. The Department of Army is taking only the equipment required

to implement the BRAC 2005 actions and to support operational requirements at

other military installations. The Army anticipates moving 212 pieces of equipment

as part of the BRAC relocation. There are capabilities laid away at Kansas Army

Ammunition Plant (AAP) that BRAC law requires the Army to move (Detonators/

Relays/Delays and 105MM Improved Conventional Munitions). The Army is selectively moving laid away equipment for those capabilities and will keep them in a

laid away status at the gaining sites.

224

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LOEBSACK

Mr. LOEBSACK. I was informed that the Army informed the Iowa National Guard

they do not intend to fund construction of field maintenance facilities that are

meant to support multiple armories, despite having previously approved designs

that are intended to do just that.

I am, of course, deeply concerned that cost overruns and delays in the BRAC process have led the Army to prioritize funding in such a way that the National Guard

is being left behind with the possible result that the Cedar Rapids, Muscatine and

Middletown sites will have to be scaled back and the effectiveness of BRAC 2005

reduced.

Can you just speak to some of those concerns that I have raised, Secretary Grone?

I really appreciate that very much.

And I guess one of the major questions is, are the cost overruns and construction

delays resulting in scaled-back goals for the BRAC 2005 process?

Secretary GRONE. The Army has not deleted any BRAC 2005 field maintenance

facilities from the BRAC projects planned in Iowa. The issue described in testimony,

‘‘The Army informed the Iowa National Guard they do not intend to fund construction of field maintenance facilities that are meant to support multiple armories, despite having previously approved designs that are intended to do just that . . .’’, is

incorrect. The Army has not informed the Iowa National Guard that their regional

field maintenance mission will be deleted. When a BRAC closing maintenance facility supports regional armories, the Army constructs a replacement facility with the

same regional mission. There are four BRAC 2005 Reserve Component projects in

Iowa—one awarded in FY06 and three planned for FY10—and none have had an

issue with maintenance facility scope.

If the projects are required to implement the recommendation, they are funded

as part of the BRAC effort. Delays in funding availability have presented execution

challenges, however, at this time, we are not aware of any recommendations that

cannot be implemented within the statutory timeline.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. REYES

Mr. REYES. I know in the case of Fort Bliss we are waiting on $32 million. We

need to have it by January, because otherwise that commissary project is delayed.

Soldiers are coming back. We have promised them that everything we could do

would be done.

And yet we have got this issue because of an internal bureaucratic dispute that

the decision hasn’t been made. Two things. Can you tell me what the status is?

Secretary GRONE. The Army is committed to replacing the Ft. Bliss commissary

and is reviewing all options for early funding.

QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. HOLT

Mr. HOLT. In their final report, the BRAC Commission stipulated that: ‘‘The Secretary of Defense shall submit a report to the Congressional Committees of Jurisdiction that movement of organizations, functions, or activities from Fort Monmouth

to Aberdeen Proving Ground will be accomplished without disruption of their support to the Global War on Terrorism or other critical contingency operations and

that safeguards exist to ensure that necessary redundant capabilities are put in

place to mitigate potential degradation of such support, and to ensure maximum retention of critical workforce.’’ Why, more than two years after the BRAC Commission recommendations became law, has the Department thus far failed to give Congress this report?

Secretary GRONE. The recommendation did not specify timeline or conditions associated with the report and the Department expects to provide the report by the end

of this calendar year.

(Since the time of the hearing, the report was provided to the Committees of Jurisdiction on December, 28, 2007.)

Mr. HOLT. So let me get this straight: you told the Commission in 2005 that you

could make the move without jeopardizing support to the warfighter, but you provided no plan to back that up?

Secretary GRONE. The Department has gained extensive experience in implementing the four previous BRAC rounds, one of which was conducted and implemented

during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This experience also involved highly technical organizations providing support to warfighters. One example of a difficult Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) mission relocation facing simiVerDate 22-MAR-2001 12:36 Aug 08, 2008 Jkt 040814 PO 00000 Frm 00228 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\110-104\346030.000 HAS2 PsN: HAS2
225

lar intellectual capital challenges was the Navy’s closure of ten and realignment of

sixteen RDT&E and Fleet Support Facilities. This move involved intellectual capital

and relocation concerns that are present at Fort Monmouth. Based on this experience, the Department is confident it can implement this recommendation within the

statutory time frame without affecting the Army’s mission support to our

warfighters.

Mr. HOLT. It’s taken you two plus years to develop a plan you claimed you already

had in 2005?

Secretary GRONE. The Department’s detailed implementation planning did not

begin until after the Congress failed to enact a joint resolution of disapproval (November 9, 2005). To do otherwise, would presuppose the outcome of the Congressional review.

Mr. HOLT. You blew the cost estimate on this move by more than 100%. Why

should we believe you now when you say you can make the move without putting

troops’ lives at risk?

Secretary GRONE. The Department’s BRAC recommendations are complex and

were not undertaken lightly. They will provide significant benefits. The movement

of the functions at Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen allows the Army to concentrate

these capabilities at Aberdeen as part of its transformational goal of achieving Network Centric Warfare. Additionally, new construction at Aberdeen allows physical

and organizational reorganization that is not possible at Fort Monmouth.

As noted in my testimony, in arriving at its original estimates, the Department

and Commission used the Cost of Base Realignment Actions (COBRA) model, which

is a tool for comparative analyses of a variety of options using standard factors applicable during the timeframe within which the BRAC analysis was conducted. This

provided for an equitable treatment of all facilities. As such, COBRA was not designed to, nor does it produce, budget quality estimates. For instance, in arriving

at comparative assessments, COBRA displays financial information in constant dollars in the initial year of implementation, which are unaffected by the inflation experienced during the implementation period. Revised cost and savings estimates,

supported by the detailed planning and site surveys necessary to support budget

submissions, could not be conducted during the COBRA analyses. For Ft. Monmouth

in particular, as planning proceeded users indicated that Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) required specific research and development lab facilities and Secret Compartmented

Information Facility (SCIF) space not believed to be necessary when the COBRA estimates were developed, and dedicated supporting facilities were added to benefit incoming missions (e.g., communication building, special operations facility, classroom/

video teleconference center/auditorium facility, and storage).

Mr. HOLT. During a May 18, 2005 hearing before the BRAC Commission, then—

Army Secretary Francis Harvey engaged in the following exchange with BRAC Commissioner James Bilbray:

Bilbray: ‘‘But you know, at a time when we’re in crisis, I mean this country’s

in crisis over what’s going on in Iraq, the war on terror, we’re not in a peace

time kind of mode where we can shape these things slowly and hey, five years

we’ll be back to where we are right now. And that’s my concern.’’

Harvey: ‘‘Well, remember this is now R&D so that’s the more strategic activity.

It’s not operational in that sense . . .’’ (emphasis added)

Mr. Ferlise, at the time Secretary Harvey made this statement, were personnel

at Fort Monmouth providing direct, 24/7 operational support to troops in Iraq and

Afghanistan? If so, could you give us some examples?

Mr. FERLISE. He was absolutely mistaken on this point, as more than 50% of the

Army’s National Stock Numbered items (60,000) currently in the field are acquired,

managed and sustained through Fort Monmouth. More than 1000 requisitions are

processed at Fort Monmouth daily in support of warfighters. Fort Monmouth is the

National Inventory Control Point for Electronics for the Army and is inextricably

engaged in supporting the deployed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the

world and performs critical functions in equipping divisions and brigades preparing

to deploy and modularize. Fort Monmouth has been on a war footing every day since

9/11, with 24/7 operations. The impact of what CECOM does to develop, acquire,

field and sustain critically needed systems to enhance operational effectiveness and

maximize the safety of our Warfighters has immediate, real time consequences

RIGHT NOW, while they are in the field. These systems include Force XXI Battle

Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force Tracking to prevent fratricide in

battle; Duke, to provide force protection against Improvised Explosive Devices; the

FIREFINDER and Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar Systems, to identify incoming

artillery and mortar rounds and provide counter fire; Counter Rocket Artillery and

226

Mortar (C–RAM), to intercept and destroy incoming projectiles; counter mine equipment; and missile warning systems, just to name a few. Additionally, Team C4ISR

is involved in the development and fielding of classified ‘‘quick reaction’’ systems involving the National Security Agency. EVERY ONE OF THESE SYSTEMS AND

MANY MORE, OPERATE 24/7. Mr. HOLT. We’ve heard estimates that at most only a third of Fort Monmouth’s

current workforce may move to Maryland. If two-thirds of the workforce is lost, how

would that impact support for our troops in the field?

Mr. FERLISE. If adequate numbers of employees do not relocate to Aberdeen Proving Ground the impact will be catastrophic on warfighters and the Army. The Commission heard testimony from Major General (Retired) William Russ, the former

Commander of CECOM as well as Commander of the Army Signal Command, where

he had responsibility for every signal brigade in the Army, with 17,000 soldiers and

civilians world wide. He stated unequivocally that he was certain that a re-location

of the magnitude contemplated in this case, would have a direct, immediate and catastrophic impact upon the mission performed by Team C4ISR and the Warfighter.

He was joined by 10 other retired General Officers in a letter to the Commission

in which they pointed out that the proposed relocation to an area devoid of any real

connection to the C4ISR mission was a destructive proposal. I need to take a minute

to explain the C4ISR mission that Fort Monmouth is engaged in before answering

further. In his initial testimony before the Commission, former Secretary of the

Army Harvey stated that the activities at Fort Monmouth are strictly ‘‘R&D’’ and

‘‘Strategic’’, and that moving them and sustaining a loss of personnel of 74% would

not have immediate impact on the Warfighter. He was absolutely mistaken on this

point, as more than 50% of the Army’s National Stock Numbered items (60,000) currently in the field are acquired, managed and sustained through Fort Monmouth.

Fort Monmouth is inextricably engaged in supporting the deployed forces in Iraq

and Afghanistan and around the world and performs critical functions in equipping

divisions and brigades preparing to re-deploy and modularize. Fort Monmouth has

been on a war footing every day since 9/11, with 24/7 operations. The impact of what

CECOM does to develop, acquire, field and sustain critically needed systems to enhance operational effectiveness and maximize the safety of our Warfighters has immediate, real time consequences RIGHT NOW, while they are in the field. These

systems include Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force

Tracking to prevent fratricide in battle; Duke, to provide force protection against

Improvised Explosive Devices; the FIREFINDER and Lightweight Counter Mortar

Radar Systems, to identify incoming artillery and mortar rounds and provide

counter fire; Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar (C–RAM), to intercept and destroy

incoming projectiles; counter mine equipment; and missile warning systems, just to

name a few. Additionally, Team C4ISR is involved in the development and fielding

of classified ‘‘quick reaction’’ systems involving the National Security Agency.

EVERY ONE OF THESE SYSTEMS AND MANY MORE, OPERATE 24/7.

Mr. HOLT. And what would be the specific impact on our counter-IED programs

like Warlock?

Mr. FERLISE. The mission of Fort Monmouth encompasses far-ranging Research

and Development of hardware and software for future C4ISR systems, as well as,

Quick Reaction Capability [QRC] items for deployed forces for specially designed capabilities needed to meet crucial, urgent warfighter needs. These QRC capabilities

are generally classified and represent the most compelling and urgent needs of

warfighters on today’s battlefields whether those battlefields are in Iraq, Afghanistan, or for that matter, in Cyberspace—today’s newest battlefield. When it comes

to C4ISR, these battles are invariably a battle of intellectual capacity. This is especially true in the area of counter IEDs. As I am sure the members of this Committee

know, IEDs have accounted for more than half of the US fatalities in Iraq. Logistics

support for all counter IED systems is orchestrated through Fort Monmouth, as well

as the lion’s share of the crucial Research and Development work. While many organizations are working on this issue, Fort Monmouth is the recognized center of excellence by all who are involved in this crucial technology. This is a very complex

and rapidly changing technology, and enemy actuating mechanisms for IEDs have

changed more than 500 times since the start of the war. As those actuating mechanisms changed, engineers at Fort Monmouth rapidly developed specifically designed

counter measures. In fact, Fort Monmouth engineers continuously develop countermeasures before insurgents field their newest actuating measure and they already

have solutions on the shelves at Fort Monmouth designed, developed, tested, and

validated against the likely future threats.

As I said, it is a battle of intellect and engineering skill with real life and death

consequences for our warfighters. IEDs are the weapon of choice for our enemies

and, like it or not, it is only a matter of time before they are used domestically.

227

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Do you know what the timeline is for the Armor Center to move

from Fort Knox to Benning?

Secretary GRONE. Elements of the Armor School and Basic Combat Training at

Fort Knox will move to Fort Benning based on course completion. Starting in October 2010 courses will be shifted to Fort Benning with all courses available by August 2011.

Æ