Posted by: If you’ve ever driven down Route 64 in Hampton, VA, or on Route 35 through Monmouth County, NJ, you’ve probably seen the chain-link fences that seem to stretch to infinity and the guarded gates that signal the presence of a military base. Many people are clueless as to what exactly occurs on these bases, or the impact that they have on a community, but there are benefits that come with having a military base in your town, and unfortunate problems that arise when that base leaves.
On May 13, 2005, the United States Department of Defense released a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) proposal to close 33 military bases and either enlarge or shrink 29 more. The proposal was created to help save the Unites States an estimated $15 billion over the course of 20 years, as well as:
- better integrate active and reserve units
- rearrange forces to be able to act around the globe
- make the military more flexible and agile
- improve cooperation between military service branches while training and fighting
- convert unneeded capacity into warfighting capability
Although there appears to be significant benefits to BRAC from the federal government perspective, there are serious problems that arise for the regions that are losing military bases.
Most people think that military bases are filled with enlisted military personnel only, which is very far from the truth. Military bases are populated with soldiers and other enlisted personnel, but they are also significant regional employers, hiring civilian employees to help run base operations and perform mission-critical duties.
Unlike military personnel who are required to go where stationed, civilian employees are not bound to follow their jobs to different bases in other states. Many civilian employees are established in their communities and have homes and families and are hesitant to leave.
In fact, we recently featured a blog post here at Unleash the Monster authored by an employee at the soon-to-be-closed Fort Monmouth in Monmouth County, NJ. In that post, the author talked about the challenges, issues and large life decisions that a base relocation or closure can have on the established civilian employees. That employee was considering making the move to Aberdeen, Md. or one of the other bases where his job was potentially relocating, but in most base realignment and closures, only about 20-30 percent of the employees will make the move.
The remaining 70-80 percent of the employees become a different challenge altogether. These civilians have just become unemployed and have a very specific range of skills and abilities needed to function in their previous military jobs. That means that a local region has to provide unemployment and job training services for a large population of unemployed residents.
However, the civilian jobs at a base are not the only things lost when a base relocates or closes. When enrolled military personnel leave a region, so does their spending. Combine that with the decreased spending power of the now unemployed civilian workers, and the local businesses begin to suffer while the region’s sales tax revenues decline.
Then there are military contractors. Many companies that sell specific solutions to the military open offices around the military bases that they are looking to sell their solutions to. When these bases leave, so do the military contractors, their jobs, and their tax dollars.
What’s left is a large, now unemployed workforce with very specific skills and abilities that may or may not be applicable for the private sector jobs available in the local region. This creates a significant need to provide education and workforce training programs to help them get the skills they need to find employment. Unfortunately, these local governments are often forced to do so with tightened purse strings due to significant decreases in tax revenue.
Although BRAC may seem like an idea that can truly benefit the federal government by slashing military costs and making the armed forces more prepared and flexible, the concept has a serious and significant negative impact on local regions losing bases. The impact of BRAC isn’t limited to the regions losing bases, however. The regions where bases are expanding and to which operations are moving also face a unique set of challenges. In our next post, we’ll analyze the regions on the other side of the coin, and the impact that the growth or reassignment of a base can have on its surrounding region.
Tue, Mar 9, 2010
Featured, State & Local