Boston Globe -- NorthWest section
Sunday, January 25, 2004

Forces marshaled against base closings

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

New campaigns aimed at preserving Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and the
US Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick are being put in place, under the
direction of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, a Waltham-based
trade group.

In its first big salvo, the council, which is taking over the lobbying and
fund-raising reins from MassDevelopment, filed comments last week concerning
the federal government's initial criteria for closing military bases in
2005. The criteria were published in the Federal Register last Dec. 22, and
the public comment period ends Wednesday. Mid-February is the deadline for
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to submit final criteria to Congress.

The main message being sent to Washington is that the initial criteria are
insufficient, because they do not take into account "the value of the
technology missions of installations around the country," including the
Hanscom base and Army's Natick center, said Chris Anderson, president of the
council and head of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative.

The Air Force base in Bedford has long been an incubator for electronic
warfare programs, while the Army's Natick facility has been in the forefront
of designing state-of-the-art apparel and food technologies for the
military, Anderson said.

An effort is also being made, he said, to "draw in other states, such as New
Jersey, New York, and California, that want the Pentagon to value technology
in a way that it hasn't in the past."

On other fronts, the council will form by early next month an executive
leadership team and begin tapping companies and other organizations in the
state for funds needed to maintain the lobbying campaign at a high level,
Anderson said, adding goal is to raise between $2.5 million and $3 million.

Leadership team members, he said, will include Governor Mitt Romney; members
of the state's congressional delegation such as Senator Edward M. Kennedy
and Representative Martin Meehan, Democrat of Lowell; Craig Coy, head of the
Massachusetts Port Authority; presidents of private and public colleges and
universities; and chief executives of high-tech companies.

For decades, universities such as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology have been research partners of the two military installations and
some of the major defense contractors serving Hanscom and Natick, Anderson
said.

So it would be foolhardy "to outsource this collaborative work to, say, Des
Moines," he said, referring to what might happen if the two bases were
closed.

Moreover, he said, Hanscom Air Force Base brings $3.2 billion into the
region annually, and the Army's Natick center a tenth of that.

The challenge will be "to communicate" those economic points to the
Pentagon, he said.

In the meantime, the state's two lobbyists in Washington, retired Air Force
general Ronald R. Fogleman and former US senator Alan Dixon of Illinois, are
working behind the scenes, promoting the merits of keeping the two bases
open. Dixon was chairman of the federal Base Realignment and Closure
Commission in 1995, when Hanscom narrowly escaped being shuttered.

In 1997, the Bedford base received another reprieve when two base-closure
bills were tabled by Congress.

Then and now, the message is the same: This region depends on military
dollars, said Carole Cowan, who spearheaded the fight seven years ago as
chairwoman of the North Suburban Chamber of Commerce, based in Woburn. She
is president of Middlesex Community College, which has campuses in Bedford
and Lowell.

"That's why it's so important for the business community to continue to be
very involved" in the campaign to save the two bases, Cowan said. "Educating
others about the value of Hanscom and Natick is a process that never ends."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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