Hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Implementation of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Decisions
Interview
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REP. JOE COURTNEY (D-CT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's probably unfair to ask you about every single change in the 2005 BRAC law and what -- if it'd be okay, there's a couple Connecticut-specific items which we'll just submit in writing.
And any help your office can give in terms of some questions we have about implementation -- and the only question I really wanted to ask about was just the consolidation of the reserve centers, which, again, GAO looked at that issue and, you know, determined that the costs are higher, the savings are less, but nonetheless it still seems like a good plan -- something that I know the Guard and Reserve units in New England, at least, are very excited about.
But there does seem to be implementation problems in terms of just, again, the costs that this is going to result in and also some of the siting that the statute specifically mandated.
Newtown, Connecticut was identified as a place where there's a reserve center that would be built. Unfortunately, there does not appear -- because Newtown, Connecticut is pretty good real estate -- a location where this can happen.
And I guess, you know, what -- GAO stated that there needs to be sort of a better system for stakeholders to really understand how this is all going to sort of play itself out. And we're seeing that in Connecticut, is that there is a lot of confusion -- again, from people who don't -- you know, who support the concept and want to see it happen.
And I'm just wondering whether that's something that is happening across the country, whether or not the Department of Defense is trying to come up with a strategy to help implement what is a good idea?
MR. GRONE: Well, the -- sir, I appreciate your comments there because the effort to -- particularly for the Army -- for this to be a total force BRAC process and to do those consolidations is critically important to the future of the reserve components and their role with the active forces as a part of the total force to execute the mission.
The adjutants general were very deeply involved in that process and they will continue to be deeply involved in that process. I'm a bit concerned that you say that there may be some issues of stakeholders in the state of Connecticut that may need some addressing.
And I'm happy to go back and talk to the Army about that and have some folks come talk to you about that because I think it is important to keep that all on track.
The question is not the implementation challenge in relation to cost -- and it's a point I want to stress again -- is that when we brought the fiscal '07 -- or '06 budget to Congress, there were concerns -- or '07 budget to Congress -- there were concerns that whether or not we were going fully fund the program.
And the questions at the time were, we know the program is not fully loaded in terms of the funds against the requirements, how can you assure us that every action will be undertaken? The commitment of the secretary and the deputy secretary was that when we -- after we went through all the implementation planning we would have a fully funded program, and that's the program we brought forward this year.
So the reserve force component transformation pieces are fully funded in the program. Issues of implementation, planning and some of those specific details about a specific reference to a specific town which may not have an available real estate asset is one we're going to have to continue to work through.
There are a limited number of those across the country, but they're the ones we're going to have to continue to work very hard, because the reserve center transformation is a critically important part of total force concept.
So I'd like to have some folks with the Army come talk to you about that to make sure that we've got the right people talking to each other in this process to make that go as smoothly as possible.
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