Isles optimistic
in base closures

The Pentagon's list is
due to be published no
later than May 16

Local businesses and some congressional leaders are cautiously optimistic that the islands will escape base closures or realignments.

Hawaii military bases Army: 43 Navy: 18 Air Force: 21 Marine Corps: 1 Total: 83 Total acres used: 245,485 acres Total areas owned: 158,404 acres Total buildings owned: 14,564 Total military assigned: 54,036 Total civilian workers: 13,774

They are basing their optimism on military expansion: the Army's latest $1.5 billion Stryker Brigade unit at Schofield Barracks and the possibility of one of the Navy's 12 aircraft carriers being based at Pearl Harbor.

Earlier this week, Anthony Principi, chairman of the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, warned that the next round of U.S. military base closings "will be tsunamis in the communities they hit."

The Pentagon, by law, has to publish the base closure list no later than May 16 in the Federal Register.

But there have been rumblings that the list, which will determine the future of some of the country's 425 major installations, could come as early as Tuesday.

The Pentagon's 2003 real property inventory notes that Hawaii has 37 major installations larger than 10 acres.

Of the 245,485 acres the military uses in Hawaii, it only owns 158,404 acres.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, a ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted through a spokesman that "the state's role is even more important now that a Stryker Brigade will be based in Hawaii, which could also be home to an aircraft carrier group."

But Mike Yuen, Inouye's spokesman, added, "Until the Pentagon releases its BRAC report, which could happen as early as next week, it is premature at this time to speculate about possible base closures or realignments."

Yuen said Inouye has always recognized that "Hawaii has a vital role in the nation's defense in the Pacific, and that analysts consider Asia to be a region that needs to be closely monitored."

The Navy still has not released the findings of a $1.8 million study that was started last year to determine whether Pearl Harbor could support an aircraft carrier and where to station more than six dozen jet fighters, tankers and helicopters.

Suggestions have included splitting the carrier's air wing, using Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe and Hickam Air Force Base to house the aircraft.

Once the base closure list is announced, Principi's commission will hold 15 hearings, especially in the communities most affected, before sending its recommendation to President Bush by Sept. 8. Bush will then have until Sept. 23 to reject the list or forward it to Congress.

Congress has 45 days to approve or reject the list in its entirety.

Since 1988, 451 installations, including Barbers Point Naval Air Station in Kalaeloa in 1999, have been eliminated or realigned. The base closures in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 saved about $29 billion, the General Accountability Office reported recently.

Jim Tollefson, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, said local business leaders decided to shy away from hiring expensive Washington lobbyists as was done by states like Texas, California and Massachusetts.

Instead, business leaders here decided to rely on signals sent by the Pentagon, such as the decision to convert a 25th Infantry Division unit into the Army's fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Tollefson believes these decisions reinforce the idea of the "island's strategic location" in the Pacific.

Tollefson said that for the past five years as a member of the chamber's military affairs committee, he has traveled to Washington, D.C. annually, where the Hawaii's business delegation was briefed by congressional and Pentagon leaders.

He said that he has seen "a definite shift in the emphasis from Europe and the Atlantic to the Pacific and Asian continents."

More and more, Tollefson said, Pentagon planners are turning their attention to places like Korea, Indonesia and China.

Tollefson said he interprets that to mean "at the end of the day, the chance there will be a larger military presence here is greater than a smaller military presence."