Noble Ideals Realized on Government Commission

VIEWPOINT

By COLLEEN TURNER Special to the Palisadian-Post “Where else are you going to see nine people standing up to the Pentagon?” I recalled hearing as I rushed by a TV monitor tuned to C-SPAN. We were on a break during the final deliberations of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission (better known as BRAC) held in August in Arlington, Virginia. The ballroom was filled with governors, senators, representatives, lobbyists and community members. TV viewers were calling into the station to comment on the proceedings. This caller’s comment caught my attention as I moved on to the next of innumerable tasks required of a senior analyst and deputy director of the Commission’s Joint Cross-Service Team. I thought to myself: Yes! That’s exactly the intention of having this Presidential Commission. It provides the kind of checks and balances for keeping our government on a healthy track. It’s an inspiring example of a democratic process in which a diverse group of citizens with proven track records (the nine commissioners), supported by approximately 90 staff, have the power to say “yes” or “no” to the Pentagon, Congress, and even the president. I felt honored to be a part of this process. Compared to those in the past, this BRAC round was exceptionally transparent. In past BRACs, influence tended to be limited to the power brokers like lobbyists and contractors. This BRAC held 20 regional hearings and more than 300 community meetings where local residents could become involved’and they did, sometimes en masse, with demonstrations, flags, T-shirts and parades. Modern technology also enabled the public to review our process on a daily basis. Our Web site at www.brac.gov received more than 25 million hits. The commission also received more than 300,000 pieces of correspondence that were posted in our e-library on the Web site along with our reports. The letters ranged from a young boy worried about his father losing his job at a shipyard to a former president siding with interests contrary to his own state. A research project about inspiring hearts and minds around the globe, sponsored by the Pentagon when I was on active reserve status from 2003-2004, indirectly led to my being identified as a potential candidate for the Commission. This year, on April 24, I got an unexpected call that led to my being selected. The following week, I poured my life into three suitcases and left Pacific Palisades to catch a Sunday evening red-eye for Washington, D.C. On Monday I made it to my first day of work and prepared to be sworn in. This assignment required a six-month commitment with up to half the time spent traveling around the country. Our charge was to evaluate the Pentagon recommendations of military installation closures and realignments, an awesome responsibility that no one took lightly. Commission chairman Anthony Principi had been a former cabinet member (as Secretary of Veterans Affairs). Along with his executive director, Charles Battaglia, they had helped transform the VA from a place veterans too often viewed as where they would go to die into a benchmark of best medical practices. I had personally witnessed the changes over the decades since both my Marine Corps brother and I received our health care there. The other eight Commissioners consisted of three retired generals and an admiral with distinguished military careers, a bipartisan mix of two former Congressmen, a former Presidential Chief of Staff/Secretary of Transportation, and a senior Department of Defense scientist. My team leader was a retired Navy ship captain, and the Review and Analysis Division consisted of retired and active military officers, and other government employees (e.g., GAO, GSA, FAA, EPA, associate analysts and young Congressional staffers’a unique blend of highly competent individuals). As a recently retired Air Force Reserve officer with Air National Guard experience, I was asked to serve as the lead for Reserve Component issues (only blasphemously now referred to as “weekend warriors”). The first two weeks involved preliminary hearings in the House and Senate buildings. It was interesting to witness in-person the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs respond to questions, some of which our analysts had helped develop for the Commissioners. After the hearings, we had to handle an array of administrative tasks and review prior BRAC reports. Coming from California, I had the added burden of finding an apartment and getting settled in a new city. With the help of my daughter, who was in the D.C. area at the time, and some wonderful members of a nearby Methodist church, I was able to quickly move into a lovely apartment in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, only a block from the bus stop and a two-mile ride to my office building. From the minute the extraordinarily complex 190 recommended realignments and closures of military installations were released by the Department of Defense on May 13, we were constantly on task to meet the legislatively mandated September deadline for our report to President Bush. My assignments took me to North Carolina, Oklahoma, Nevada, Colorado, and even back to California. While the travel was extremely demanding, I appreciated that without BRAC, I might never have visited the fascinating National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City featuring former Palisadians like Will Rogers and Ronald Reagan or realized where Blackbeard the pirate roamed offshore Beaufort, North Carolina. In Los Angeles at a regional hearing, I was seated across from another former Palisadian, Governor Schwarzenegger, as he was sworn in by our legal counsel. Back at the Commission office in Arlington, I facilitated meetings with community and state government representatives from Arkansas, Texas, Michigan and Montana. The country never looked so big to me and I had never realized just how many military installations there are in the U.S. and its territories. The Joint Cross-Service Team had responsibility for nearly two-thirds of the recommendations, ranging from hospitals, depots and laboratories to training and education facilities. Discussions about joint training of cooks and chaplains provided both amusement and a high degree of frustration. It wasn’t hard to see why so many wars are fought about religion and why good food for the troops is a priority. I was directly responsible for the analysis of recommendations that facilitated Department of Defense savings of $2.2 billion involving 10,000 personnel in 25 states. I dealt with members of Congress and senior Department of Defense officials, set up and contributed to formal hearings, and wrote and presented nationally televised decision briefings for the commissioners. During the final deliberations, when my turn came to testify, the modifications I recommended were questioned by one of the commissioners and the motion was tabled with a request for more information. I was called out to handle the instant influx of communication and it felt as if the entire room was staring at me. A Texas senator requested an immediate meeting to discuss my proposal that two units slated to go to Texas remain in Colorado and Georgia, their respective areas. Several hours later the drama was resolved by an 8-0 vote (with one recusal) and my short-lived notoriety was over. We often heard claims and read various complaints in the newspapers about political bias in this process. With great conviction I can say that these commissioners worked exhaustively hard to thoughtfully consider every angle of the recommendations and to represent the best interests of the American people. Admittedly I was disappointed at times in some of the people and decisions made, but so was everybody else because we disagreed about priorities. That’s how a participatory process works. Also, I had a chance to see firsthand how our military, Congress, and local communities interface. Sometimes I was inspired and at other times disgusted. I developed a new appreciation for the law and even for lawyers because our general counsel and his staff of two attorneys lent a tone of impeccability to the entire process. No doubt my time with the Commission will stand out as a highlight experience of my life, one in which I can say that noble ideals were honored and realized. The 2005 BRAC process ended with the two-volume report being signed off by the president and uncontested by Congress within the 45-day allotted time limit. Eighty-six percent of the Pentagon recommendations were approved, for an estimated savings of $35.6 billion over 20 years, although elation over the savings was dampened for some by the current costs of war in Iraq. The process (and a copy of the actual report) was recently featured in the new TV show “Commander In Chief.” I thought the show did a good job of representing the most important aspects of the process. And I found it interesting that the fictionalized president allowed her home-town submarine base to close in the same state as the one we kept a submarine base open. Even Hollyweird, as some of my more conservative colleagues prefer to describe it, can serve to model noble ideals. (Colleen Turner, a lieutenant colonel, USAF Reserve (Ret.), is a native Palisadian and Palisades High School graduate [’69] who earned her Ph.D. in social welfare from UCLA. She is currently focusing on writing and speaking on the topic “Best Practices for Inspiring Hearts and Minds: A Military Officer’s Quest to Wage Peace.”)