Gov. John Baldacci and the state dodged a bullet last week when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission closed just one of three possible facilities in Maine, preserving manufacturing jobs and bolstering the governor’s political standing.
“Obviously nobody is happy with the situation in Brunswick,” said Patrick Murphy of Strategic Marketing Services in Portland. “But we’ve gone from a situation where there was a lot of doom and gloom and the possibility that all three facilities would close.”
The BRAC decision to only close the Brunswick Naval Air Station, but keep open the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the defense accounting office on the old Loring Air Force Base in Aroostook County, was generally greeted with great relief last week outside of the Brunswick area, because people had expected much worse.
Results from a quarterly public opinion poll done by Strategic Marketing Services and released two weeks ago showed a declining confidence in both Maine’s economy and the governor, fueled, in part, by the looming base closures.
Murphy said the closing of just one base should help the governor’s standing.
“It’s really a federal issue, yet the chief executive in the state is the one that takes a hit. At the end of the day, politically the fallout is much greater for governor than it is for a senator or than it is for a Congress person,” he said. So when the news is good, or at least not so bad, the governor should reap the benefit.
Murphy also pointed out the closure of Brunswick will be phased out from 2009 to 2011. The gubernatorial election is in 2006. The closure takes 2,667 active-duty military personnel and 702 full-time civilians out of Brunswick, along with 1,341 part-time reservists, according to numbers released by the base.
While the Brunswick area will have to absorb an economic hit, the closure of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard would have been tougher on the state’s economy in terms of lost personal income and the need to absorb highly paid, uniquely skilled and older workers – a tough scenario that could still be played out if Bath Iron Works ever shuts its doors.
“At the shipyard are primarily civilian jobs. …The pay scale is much higher,” said Joyce Benson, who worked on some of the economic loss projections the State Planning Office did in anticipation of the BRAC announcement.
While she does not diminish the effect the closing of Brunswick Naval Air Station has on the community, the bulk of the employees are military personnel. “Some have families. There is an impact in the community. But many of them are single and live on the base or in barracks. The pay scale is proportionally lower,” and “the spending in the community is proportionally less.”
The need for the community to absorb workers also was mitigated because military people move with the military, she said.
A local authority has been formed to help redevelop the base. Murphy of Strategic Marketing Services wants to see a commercial airport go onto the 3,200 acres already equipped with hangars and a runway. It would offer an alternative to “the ridiculously overpriced airport in Portland … which can’t really expand anyway,” he said.
“There’s tremendous potential there,” he said, with a large market within a one-hour radius. “People have got to think big in this context.”
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