Defense Communities 360 Headlines

Lawmakers offered several novel arguments against granting DOD’s request for a new BRAC round in 2015 while questioning top Pentagon officials during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, but ultimately all the members of the panel who addressed the issue voiced reasons to oppose additional base closures. There’s got to be a better way to close installations than the BRAC process, which upsets communities as soon as a new round is authorized, said Sen. Tim Kaine. “When BRAC is announced, what happens is that every community that has military assets, whether they’re ultimately going to be on the chopping block or not, they lawyer-up, they accountant-up, they public relations-up …

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter signed a measure earlier this month making Idaho the 45th state to adopt an interstate agreement designed to smooth the transition for military children transferring to a new school district. “We thank Gov. Otter for signing the interstate compact,” said Kathleen Berg, chair of the Military Interstate Children’s Compact Commission. “This was truly one of the fastest moving pieces of legislation for the commission …

A plan to convert the former Fort Gillem, Ga., into a logistics hub serving Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Port of Savannah could be jeopardized unless state officials’ concerns about contamination from the post that has seeped into neighboring Forest Park are mollified. Earlier this year, the state asked the Environmental Protection Agency to consider making the installation a Superfund site, an action that would severely hamper the community’s reuse plan from going forward …

The Air Force Civil Engineer Center recently has completed a year-long effort to reconcile a 1.5 million-acre discrepancy between Air Force and Bureau of Land Management records over what parcels being used by the service are considered withdrawn public lands. Withdrawn lands, which are managed as part of the public domain by BLM, are tracts that have been withdrawn from the operation of public land laws for military use …

Officials still are evaluating whether to furlough more than 700,000 civilian employees as a way to trim defense spending over the last half of the year, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale said on Thursday. “Secretary Hagel has asked that we take another close look at furloughs, and we are in the process of doing that …

In a review of the impact of the growing number of privatization projects on military installations, the Government Accountability Office concluded that future base closure rounds would benefit from the Defense Department providing more comprehensive information about the potential costs created when DOD terminates project agreements with the private sector. The congressional watchdog agency found that the department likely would incur liabilities following a BRAC round for renewable energy and privatized utility projects on affected installations …

First Lady Michelle Obama joined Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley at a bill signing in Annapolis Wednesday to showcase the efforts of states to streamline credentialing and licensing procedures for service members, veterans and their spouses. O’Malley signed into law the Veterans Full Employment Act, which simplifies the process for service members, veterans, and their spouses to obtain more than 70 civilian credentials and licenses, allowing them to readily transfer their military training, experience and skills into civilian certification and licenses and academic degrees or certifications …

Officials are looking for ways to reduce the civilian workforce by 1,000 positions at 60 installations across the Air Force without laying off employees as they try to meet funding targets in the fiscal 2012 budget request. “Bases are already working through this,” spokeswoman Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley said, trying to match civilians in surplus positions with open jobs. “Our goal is not to do involuntary separation; our goal is to find other jobs” for civilians affected by the reductions …

While senior officials for the Navy and Marine Corps acknowledged at a hearing Tuesday of the House Armed Services Committee that they don’t expect to eliminate much infrastructure if a BRAC round is launched in 2015, for the most part they did not go along with the ranking member’s ploy to convince his colleagues to authorize more base closures. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) asked the witnesses if it would be accurate to characterize their needs in a future BRAC as making changes around the edges versus “closing huge, major bases in the middle …

Pentagon spending to support a permanent military presence in Germany, South Korea and Japan is subject to little oversight and rising faster than anticipated, according to a report released Wednesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nearly 70 percent of the $10 billion DOD spends on overseas installations goes to facilities in those three countries. The committee’s review looked at how the burden of costs is shared between the United States and its allies, the impact of planned posture changes on those costs, and the spending and oversight of foreign governments’ in-kind payments used for military construction projects …