Defense Communities 360 Headlines

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 …

Lawmakers on Wednesday pressed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to explain why the department’s $527 billion base budget request for fiscal 2014 ignores sequestration and is $52 billion above the spending cap set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said what was “most troubling” about the budget was that it did “not even acknowledge the mandatory cuts associated with sequestration in fiscal year ’14, much less propose a plan to replace the cuts that can actually pass Congress …

One of about two dozen military command centers operated by North American Aerospace Defense Command during the Cold War is available to anyone interested in purchasing two windowless buildings in Cicero, N.Y. The SAGE — Semi-Automated Ground Environment — complex at the former Hancock Air Force Base has 175,000 square feet of space and is being offered for $895,000, reports the Post-Standard. The buildings — which have two-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls and one-foot-thick concrete floors — were originally used to track Soviet bombers and assign jets and missiles to intercept them. After the military closed the complex in 2001, the General Services Administration disposed of it. The property now is part of Hancock Airpark, an industrial park being developed by a local economic development entity.

A partnership between the federal government and other organizations has unveiled a publication series intended to help civilians support military families and veterans across a variety of endeavors. The How to Help Military and Veteran Families series will feature 11 issues tailored to audiences such as medical professionals, faith-based communities, educators, employers, financial institutions, legal professionals, first responders, mental health professionals, and families and friends …

As the budget season gets under way, Democrats and Republicans will need to find a compromise over sequestration before appropriators can craft fiscal 2014 spending measures. As the law currently stands, automatic cuts will result in government-wide discretionary spending falling from about $984 billion in the current year to $967 billion in FY 2014. That’s the figure House appropriators favor …

The top officials for the Navy and Marine Corps told lawmakers Tuesday that they do not expect to cut much spare capacity if a new base closure round goes ahead in 2015. “We in the Navy have taken previous BRAC rounds very seriously,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the House Armed Services Committee. “We’ve shed most of our duplicative and overlapping bases and services …