The agreement will preclude near-shore commercial or industrial construction along the areas of the Hood Canal and neighboring waterways managed by DNR where the Navy operates, according to a press release.

“[The partnership] will enhance environmental conservation along a portion of the Hood Canal and prevent encroachment into Navy operating ranges that are so vital to our mission and our national security,” said Capt. Peter Dawson, commanding officer of Naval Base Kitsap.

“This partnership will also provide new protections for sensitive marine ecosystems, safeguard public access, and support the jobs that depend on the Navy’s continued presence in the region,” said Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark.

Turner brought a photo of employees standing in a darkened hallway at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where the lights had been turned off in an effort to save money.

In an interview earlier this month, the commander of the 88th Air Base Wing outlined the cuts Wright-Pat is being forced to take to address a 40 percent reduction — more than $30 million — in its budget over the last five months of the fiscal year.

Airmen and civilian employees work in buildings with lights turned off in hallways and air conditioning shut down, the Dayton Daily News reported. “Every day that we don’t have air conditioning on, we’re not spending $7,000 on the installation,” Col. Cassie Barlow said.

“A 40 percent reduction is really tough,” Barlow told the paper. “We’re really having to dig deep to find the reductions.”

The microgrid will decentralize how power is sent across the installation, ensuring that a major power outage doesn’t affect critical operations. It was designed by Lockheed Martin as part of a test effort funded by DOD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.

At Bliss the microgrid is powering the brigade combat team complex, which can now run in an emergency without the base’s main power supply and instead use the back-up energy provided by the microgrid’s 300-kilowatt storage system, reported Stars and Stripes.

“We are entering an age of emerging threats and cyber warfare,” spokesman Maj. Joe Buccino said in a written statement. There is too much risk of “extended power loss in the event of an attack on the fragile electric grid. This project represents the future of military energy security,” Buccino explained.

The committee would allocate $512.5 billion for defense spending next year, representing a moderate cut from the $526.6 billion request submitted last month by the White House, reported CQ. The committee earlier this week revealed that it is recommending $9.9 billion for military construction and family housing programs, down from the administration’s $11.0 billion request for FY 2014.

The House is working off a topline discretionary spending limit of $967 billion that takes into account the spending caps established under sequestration. The Senate, however, plans to mark up spending bills using a topline of $1.058 trillion, ignoring the sequester and leaving it unsettled as to how Congress will pass individual spending bills for next year.

Calling it an “austere budget year,” House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said, “This is the hand that sequestration has dealt us, and we have no choice but to try and make the best of what we have.”

The partnership is intended to build on Walmart’s recent pledge to offer a job to any honorably discharged veteran in the year after he or she leaves active duty, a commitment the company projects will result in hiring and training more than 100,000 veterans over the next five years.

“The collaboration creates an opportunity to build a stronger connection between America’s defense communities and an employer that is in nearly every military community,” said ADC CEO Tim Ford.

For ADC, the partnership coincides with the association’s focus on supporting military personnel during the transition period when they first separate from the armed forces.

“While new veterans may not call a defense community home forever, it is very often where they will end up when they begin their transition. That is why transition matters to defense communities, and that is why ADC is focused on helping our members build secure and stable ‘landing spaces,’” Ford said.

The overriding goal of the partnership is to ease the transition process for service members. The association believes that leveraging its members, who represent the single best conduit to military leaders at installations across the nation, is the most effective way for Walmart to connect with separating service members.

The partnership is designed to continue improving the transition process over the coming years as Walmart strengthens its ties with community and state leaders.

“Through Walmart’s leadership and support, ADC will continue its dialogue on improving the transition process and identifying ways communities can build local landing spaces,” Ford said.

ADC plans to kick off the partnership next month at the Defense Communities National Summit with a special forum featuring key leaders from defense communities and states, Congress, DOD, VA, nonprofit organizations and other policy leaders. The goal of the interactive discussion will be to identify ways stakeholders can collaborate to create a secure landing space for transitioning veterans and their families.

Last year about 150 soldiers left each month, but now more than 200 service members are leaving the military per month, Eddie Perez, the post’s transition services manager, told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

The greatest number of separations occur between April and the end of summer, said Dudley Love, chief of the personnel readiness branch. He expects more activity on post this year because many of the deployed units are now returning.

Based on a survey of 100 soldiers, about 80 percent of those separating are going to school and 20 percent are going to work or starting their own business, Perez said.

By June 1, the Air Force is expected to announce its preferred base for each of three categories — main operating and training bases led by active-duty units, and a main operating base led by a National Guard unit.

In Wichita, Kan., the home of McConnell AFB, community leaders are hoping the base is chosen in one of the two active-base categories it is vying for. The base has an annual economic impact of $619 million and employs nearly 3,500 airman and civilians.

“We’re all waiting anxiously,” Pat Gallagher, government relations manager for the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce and the group’s liaison with McConnell, told the Wichita Eagle.

The new tankers built by Boeing are not scheduled to arrive at the main operating and training bases until 2016 and the guard-led base until 2018.

About 11,000 teachers, aides and other workers at DOD Education Activity (DODEA) schools will be limited to a maximum of five days of furloughs, which will be taken at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, reported Stars and Stripes.

“Our commitment to our servicemen and women who have children in these schools is that they will get an accredited school year,” a defense official said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.

In all, about 68,000 of DOD’s 750,000 U.S. civilian employees will be exempt from furloughs, either fully or partially. The largest number are employed by the Navy, which has been granted about 44,000 exemptions. Of those, more than 29,000 are shipyard workers. Navy leaders had argued that furloughs would cause costly delays on work being done on aircraft carriers and submarines.

The other services have been granted a much smaller number of exemptions. In the Army, 7,267 civilians are exempt, primarily medical workers; in the Air Force, 4,291 civilians across a variety of missions are exempt, according to the story. And about 50,000 foreign workers at overseas bases are exempt from furloughs due to agreements with the host nations.

Also on Tuesday, a group of 27 House Republicans and Democrats wrote a letter to Hagel calling the decision to apply furloughs uniformly across the department “misguided,” reported the Hill. The lawmakers wanted the Pentagon to allow the Navy and Marine Corps to avoid furloughs since Navy leaders have said they would not be needed for the service to achieve its required amount of budget cuts in fiscal 2013.

The hurdle is the wide chasm between the House and Senate over the FY 2014 topline for discretionary spending. House appropriators plan on using a $967 billion spending level that takes the sequester into account, while the Senate Democrats are setting spending at $1.058 trillion, making the assumption that the automatic spending cuts will be reversed.

So far, the two parties have made no headway over closing the $91 billion gap for fiscal 2014 spending.

“This imperils this year’s appropriations process, making it nearly impossible to move all 12 bills,” Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee , said Wednesday about the refusal of Republicans to negotiate a compromise between the House and Senate budget resolutions.

“Instead, we will likely see a few bills given reasonable allocations while others are left in limbo, indefinitely until we pass a [continuing resolution],” Lowey said.

Still, the milcon, defense and homeland security spending bills are likely to move forward this year, according to the story.

The milcon-veterans affairs panel made quick work of its spending bill, approving it in little more than a half-hour with no amendments offered. The panel recommends spending $9.9 billion on military construction and family housing programs in FY 2014, a $646 million reduction from the enacted level for FY 2013. After accounting for sequestration, though, only an estimated $8.8 billion is available for those programs this year.

In April, the Pentagon requested $11.0 billion for military construction and family housing.

Community officials told the agency that the Army did not always maintain the facilities to their expectations, resulting in facility deterioration. At the former Kansas Army Ammunition Plant, for example, community representatives said the Army never repaired the roof of a building damaged in a storm. After it found mold growing inside the building, the local redevelopment authority (LRA) decided to demolish it at its own expense. A similar situation occurred at a housing facility, according to the report.

A representative from the Army BRAC office told the congressional watchdog agency that it makes every effort to maintain closed facilities in accordance with their planned use. LRAs have an unrealistic expectation about the condition of buildings, he said.

In contrast to the Navy and Air Force, the Army has not issued guidance on the appropriate levels of maintenance for facilities at closed installations, GAO found. Without well-defined guidance from the Army, LRAs will not have a clear understanding of what maintenance the Army will provide, hindering the transfer and reuse process, the report states.

GAO recommended that DOD direct the Army to issue guidance — consistent with the department’s guidance — on the specific levels of maintenance it will provide following a base closure based on the probable reuse of the facilities.

The Navy has developed the most comprehensive guidance on maintenance of closed facilities. It calls for installation officials to consult with the LRA early on in the closure process to determine the proper level of maintenance for individual facilities.