An
AP report by Jeffrey McMurray talks about eight vulnerable military installations here in Georgia during this round of BRAC closures, four of which are described as being at "Severe" risk: Dobbins Air Reserve Base and the Naval Air Station - Atlanta, both in Marietta; Navy Supply Corps School in Athens; and the Marine Corps Logistics Base here in Albany.
More of my thoughts on BRAC, our SoD's 25% infrastructure reduction goal in wartime, and the economic ramifications of both below the fold.
Perhaps it's because I'm just a civilian here in base-heavy Georgia, but now doesn't seem like the time for our Secretary of Defense to set a goal of twenty-five percent military infrastructure reduction. Perhaps Rumsfeld's using the same formula for this that the administration applied to costing the Medicare Drug bill, projecting deficit reduction, and figuring necessary troop levels, equipment and ordinance stock for the Iraq invasion and occupation.
Bush-It Arithmetic strikes again.
Now I'll be honest; I know little about what three of the four most vulnerable bases in Georgia actually do on-site. I do know that every region which hosts one of these bases depends on it economically. And I do know a good deal about what goes on at MCLB - Albany, which happens to be twenty minutes away from my house.
For one, the base recently received funds to increase production capacity and personnel to meet the demand for combat-ready armored vehicles. Plus MCLB - Albany works as a repair facility in several DoD joint ventures, is headquarters for Marine Corps logistics - LOGCOM (in tandem with the MCLB in Barstow, CA and the Blount Island Command in Jacksonville, FL), and predominantly supplies Marine forces east of the Mississippi River and part of the Atlantic Fleet.
That's just what we need, isn't it? To close any dedicated supply facility and cripple the military's ability to make and distribute what our troops need most while deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere?
And then there are the economic implications. Closing any military base in the country can devestate the associated community. Here, however, shutting down MCLB - Albany would decimate the economy of the entire Southwestern region. According to Albany's Chamber of Commerce page on Economic Development, MCLB is the city's second largest employer with a payroll that totals over $194M dollars annually. I know people personally who commute as far as sixty miles and more just to work at the base and take home a decent paycheck. It's one of only a handful of employers in the area which offer a living wage and decent benefits.
To put it into perspective, Albany is a city where, in many cases, college graduates who choose to live and work here are forced to compete for skilled jobs - nursing, financial services, and entry level IT to name a few - which consistently pay less than 20K a year to start. But this is also a city where a single person can survive - just barely - on seven bucks an hour. The low cost of living in Albany has always been one of MCLB's biggest selling points. MCLB pays well for this area, but despite the massive collective payroll figure, the individual pay rate for a civilian contractor is still substantially lower than our California and Florida LOGCOM counterparts (or any other installation nationwide as far as I can tell.)
If there is any silver lining at all, I only see it in my musings of how our two Republican Senators are going to handle this, especially since Saxby's up in '06. If we lose any base, especially one in this half of the state, there'll be political hell to pay from top to bottom. Still, I can't imagine it as a worthwhile trade-off under any circumstances.
