Posted on: Monday, May 9, 2005

MILITARY UPDATE

By Tom Philpott

Sometime between now and May 16, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will release a list of military bases the Department of Defense wants closed, labeling them unneeded infrastructure that wastes billions of dollars annually.

Community leaders in affected areas will express shock and anger.

Paid lobbyists will begin pumping out reasons a new nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission, also known as BRAC, should spare particular bases from the final list to be sent to the White House by Sept. 8.

And tens of thousands of military retirees who rely on these bases for medical care, cost-free drugs, discount shopping and more will wonder whether to pull up roots and move near a base not on the list.

The extent of retiree migrations from past rounds of base closings is unknown. Defense officials who oversee installations say they have no such data. Neither does the Government Accountability Office, which has carefully studied the impact of previous rounds.

But there's general agreement among base-closing experts that the next round of closings should trigger smaller migrations of retirees than previous rounds.

They point to two healthcare options enacted since a round in 1995, which should ease the expense for retirees of living without a base nearby. They are TRICARE for Life, the robust insurance supplement to Medicare for service elderly, and the increasingly popular TRICARE mail order pharmacy plan.

They also cite a boom in commercial discount stores, such as Wal-Mart and Price Club, which now compete for customers with military base stores.

Several Arizona cities commissioned a study in 2002 to measure the effect of nearby bases on their economies. The study contractor, Maguire Company of Phoenix, found it reasonable in conducting its analysis to assume that 25 percent of military retirees living within 50 miles of a base were so "linked" to its amenities that they would leave the area if the base closed.

Sociology professor Mark Fagan at Jackson State University in Jackson, Ala., surveyed retirees living in Calhoun County, Ala., home of Fort McClellan, in 1995 after the Pentagon released its most recent base-closing list. Fifty-four percent of respondents said they would leave the county if McClellan closed.

But when the base finally did, in 1999, there was no follow-up census to learn how many of the surveyed retirees actually did move. Fagan said in a recent interview that fewer retirees likely would migrate today following a base closing.

"With Wal-Mart super-centers and with Internet shopping," he said, the financial impact for retirees of losing base access "has gone down."

That doesn't mean, he added, retirees won't miss their bases.

"These military people are socialized to live together," said Fagan. "They are conditioned to the pomp and ceremony and status" of being part of a military community that recognizes their careers and rank. "The nostalgia is very strong to be around a base, around that military culture."

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