Boston Globe
August 26, 2005

US panel sets back Hanscom
Pentagon's plan for expansion rejected; 200 jobs at stake

By Bryan Bender and Matt Viser, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- An independent federal review panel dealt a crushing blow to a
multimillion-dollar state development plan yesterday when it rejected the
Pentagon's proposal to bring more than 1,000 new jobs to Hanscom Air Force
Base -- a reversal that will cut more than 200 jobs from the Bedford base
under a military consolidation plan.

The surprising decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission was
issued after the panel's staff concluded that the ''vast majority" of the
work that the Pentagon wanted to move to Massachusetts from bases in Ohio,
Texas, and Alabama was not related to the high-technology aerospace research
that is conducted at Hanscom's Electronic Systems Center.

The news stunned Governor Mitt Romney, Massachusetts legislators, and a
public-private partnership that had secured more than $240 million in
taxpayer money to help finance the expansion, along with a $168 million
commitment from developers to add housing.

Trying to put the best possible face on the situation, Romney and other
officials stressed that in the end the base had been saved from the fearsome
consolidation process and that the Pentagon can still decide in the future
to expand its activities.

''I am disappointed we are not adding new jobs at Hanscom today," Romney
said in a statement, ''but our expectation is that as military spending and
research grows, so will Hanscom."

Representative John Tierney, a Democrat whose district includes Hanscom,
said: ''We were threatened with closure, and the good news is the yeoman's
work that the state did paid off and it will stay open. ''The bad news," he
added, ''is we got our expectations up that we would get 1,000 new jobs, and
that is not going to happen."

In other moves yesterday, the commission voted to close Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington, where many wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war
veterans receive treatment.

Its staff will be relocated across town at the National Naval Medical Center
in Bethesda, Md., and in a nod to the Army hospital's storied history, the
expanded facility will retain the Walter Reed name.

The BRAC commission is scheduled to issue its final recommendations to
President Bush on Sept. 8. Bush will have two weeks to approve or reject the
recommendations, but he cannot change them. Then Congress must act in 45
days, or the plan becomes law.

Yesterday's deliberations followed a BRAC vote Tuesday to spare Navy bases
in Maine and Connecticut, a significant setback to plans the Pentagon and
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had said would have saved $50
billion over two decades.

But the reversal on Hanscom renewed jitters that Massachusetts, which had
been slated to gain jobs in the nationwide base consolidation plan, could
end up losing some instead.

The commission could vote today on plans to relocate 12 F-15 fighter jets
and maintenance crews based at Otis Air Guard Base on Cape Cod.

Under the Hanscom proposal, put forward by Rumsfeld in May, the Bedford base
would have become the centerpiece of the military's air and space research,
making room for high-tech directorates now located at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in Ohio, Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and Lackland Air
Force Base in Texas.

Those moves add up to 1,300 new jobs. With 200 other positions already set
to be transferred from Hanscom's Air Force Research Laboratory and Space
Vehicles Directorate, the base -- and the Massachusetts economy -- would
have netted 1,104 new workers.

But the commission voted yesterday to keep the Ohio, Alabama, and Texas
facilities intact, contending the Pentagon had not accurately identified the
kind of work there. Rather than conduct research -- Hanscom's specialty --
personnel at the three other bases break codes and oversee some of the
military's day-to-day computer operations, the commission concluded.

And when the panel approved the Pentagon recommendation to move the Hanscom
laboratory jobs to facilities in Ohio and New Mexico, it trimmed the
workforce by more than 200, officials said. Combined, the military
facilities at Hanscom and in Natick have a workforce of 33,000.

BRAC commissioner James T. Hill, a retired Army general, said the idea to
consolidate unrelated high-technology jobs at Hanscom ''was just a dumb idea
done by people who were trying to do something right." By lumping the jobs
together, the Pentagon caused confusion among commissioners.

Ultimately, the panel's chairman, Anthony Principi, called a 15-minute
recess to make sure the commission had its facts straight.

For Romney, yesterday was a dramatic turnaround from three months ago, when
the Pentagon announced plans to move jobs to Hanscom. Romney then stood on
the State House steps and declared it a day for the ages: ''I think history
is going to show that this day and this expansion has the most positive
economic impact on Massachusetts than anything that's happened in a very
long time."

Local officials voiced disappointment that the region's economy would not
get the ''shot in the arm" that Romney spoke of that day, but seemed happy
Hanscom would not be lost entirely.

''There was hope, of course, that the additional people coming would
stimulate local job increases. However, frankly, I'm just glad the base is
staying open," said Sheldon H. Moll, a Bedford selectman. Moll also said
that officials would no longer have to worry about traffic and housing
issues that would have come with an infusion of more than 1,000 new Hanscom
employees.

It also means that a planned expansion of Bedford High School can probably
be scaled back. Children of employees are taught in elementary and middle
school on the base by Lincoln educators, and typically move to Bedford High.

The commission's decision also means that the Pentagon will probably scrap
its plan to pump $131.3 million into a massive expansion of Hanscom. The
plans called for three new buildings and 615,292 square feet of office
space, according to plans described in Defense Department documents.

In February, the Massachusetts Legislature approved $242 million in bonds to
expand office space to 1.25 million square feet if Hanscom was spared. The
blueprints for that plan had been intended to demonstrate that Hanscom had
plenty of room to expand and enough state support to foot the bill.

The expansion plan also included a provision for 800 units of housing at a
cost of $168 million, funded by a private developer.

But Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Software Council, who was
part of the state campaign to save Hanscom, said the base's preservation is
a boost to technology research in the area -- even without the expansion.
''The status quo is $3 billion of [economic] benefits to Massachusetts
annually," Plotkin said. ''That's nothing to sneeze at. It's unfortunate
that they couldn't grow it because that made a lot of sense. But given that
the other alternative was to close it, I think the decision to keep it open
isn't too bad."

Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat, expressed cautious
optimism about Hanscom's future.

''We would have preferred to add 1,000 jobs, but we are pleased that the
BRAC commission recognized Hanscom's military value," Meehan said. ''Over
time, this is a base that is prepared to grow and take on new missions," he
said.

Robert Weisman of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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