Pentagon legislative proposals ask for BRAC, exemptions from FOIA

The Pentagon recently sent Congress a package of legislative proposals, some of which lay detailed ground work for a new round of base realignments and closures, as well as seek exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act concerning military doctrine and tactics.

Jamie Morin, the Pentagon's director of cost assessment and program evaluation, said last week the Defense Department could reap as much as 25 percent savings in some mission areas if it were given the authority by Congress to cut excess facilities and infrastructure.

“It's not a popular answer, but base realignment and closure is an important piece of this,” he said during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“When I worked for the Air Force, our walking-around, rough-order estimate was it took 800 to 900 airmen to open a base, before you had any operational folks there,” he continued.

Many in Congress, however, are staunchly opposed to another round of base realignments and closures, known as BRAC, after a 2005 effort yielded little or no savings.

Morin stressed that DOD was unsatisfied with the 2005 BRAC.

“A future BRAC round would have a much different financial ramification,” he said. “Even though the 2005 BRAC round is now paying off for the department financially, it was a much smaller scale of closure and large scale realignment than the previous rounds, which yielded much larger financial savings earlier.”

Meanwhile, a different provision in the legislative proposal package DOD sent to Congress asks for FOIA exemptions for military “tactics, techniques and procedures related to the rule of engagement” that are unclassified, but categorized as sensitive.

The provision is focused on “the public disclosure of the information could reasonably be expected to risk impairment of the effective operation of Department of Defense by providing an advantage to an adversary or potential adversary,” according to the proposal language.