Small communities fight for military bases facing closure

[jswordy]

LOOGOOTEE -- By day, scientists and engineers at Indiana's only Navy base work on classified projects for submarines and high-tech weapons systems. At night, they go home to houses with big porches in tiny towns.

To many, it's the best of both worlds -- a challenging, high-paid job with small-town appeal. Even those in surrounding communities who don't work at the base take pride in its work.

"There's a set of moral ties, an element that keeps us here," said Dusty Wilson, 35, an electrical engineer in night-vision technology who is the fourth generation in his family to work at the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center. "Everything you need is here. You don't have to leave your roots."

Times could be changing for this southern Indiana community and others across the nation that depend on military bases for jobs, tax dollars and retail sales.

Pentagon officials are preparing for their fifth round of base closings, and they say there's plenty of fat to trim. Officials won't specify how many of 400 bases are targeted but say the military has 24 percent more capacity than it needs.

Recommendations for closings are due May 16 to a nine-member Base Realignment and Closure -- or BRAC -- commission. Defense leaders say the closures, the first since 1995, could save billions.

But what's good for the federal pocketbook is causing anxiety in military-dependent communities.

"There are a lot of people saying they don't know what they would do," said Jeff Bowling, 32, an electronics technician at Crane whose stepfather also works at the base and whose brother is employed by a Crane contractor.

Bowling lives in Loogootee, a town of 2,741 people where 67 percent of all wages paid come from Crane.

Crane -- Indiana's 12th largest single-site employer -- provides 8,100 jobs either through the government or related contractors, with a total payroll of $368 million. Its tasks range from modifying weapons for Navy Seals to testing laser-guided bombs, and it has 650,000 tons of ordnance storage capacity.

Many employees say they'd have to move to find similar work.

http://www.dailycitizen.com/articles/2005/01/17/news/bcrane.txt

[UL_Approved]

1. Building our military?

How many more bases are "unnecessary"? How many more people will be out of a job?

This is "defense spending" Reagan-style. Talk one game from the podium, and cut everything and take the money out the back door.

[merh]

2. Maybe now those uninformed weed supporters will start to

question their leader and his "loyalty" to the troops. Its hard to recognize support of the military when you are shutting down bases and put folks out of work.

[central scrutinizer]

3. another example of red state teat-sucking

The blue states support the red states while the red states whine about high taxes and call anybody (else) living off the federal teat a welfare queen. Let's move these jobs to the blue states since they are paying the freight anyway.

[merh]

4. Blue state businesses and federal monies will be cut off first.

Red states will be cuddled.