AUGUSTA – Economic losses from the proposed closing and realignment of Maine military facilities could add up to nearly $500 million a year, Gov. John Baldacci said Tuesday as he vowed to make a strenuous case in the months ahead to keep the facilities open.
“We have about four months and it has to be a full-court press,” the governor said. “This is a four-month sprint.”
Baldacci released preliminary figures estimating the overall economic impact of the Pentagon’s planned closing of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery and Defense Finance and Accounting Center in Limestone, and reduction in the Brunswick Naval Air Station’s mission and employment.
The total of direct and indirect losses if the curtailments go through comes to $465 million, according to figures released by Baldacci. The shipyard closing would take the biggest toll from the loss of payroll and spending, $314 million, followed by Brunswick at $135 million and DFAS at $16 million.
Direct and indirect job losses add up to nearly 12,000, said Baldacci, with 6,788 at Portsmouth, 4,655 at Brunswick and 546 at DFAS. The analysis is limited to Maine’s impact and does not include residents of neighboring New Hampshire or expenditures made out of state, Baldacci said.
Surrounded by legislators and aides at a Cabinet Room news conference, Baldacci was asked whether he thinks politics influenced the base closing proposals, which could hit Maine harder than any other New England state except Connecticut.
“It isn’t about the politics of the issue,” Baldacci said, adding that he makes no connection between voting patterns in the states and how they fared in the base closing process. “I have no information to make that conclusion,” he said.
Maine and Connecticut were part of a Northeast sweep for Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry in the November election, which he lost to President Bush.
Baldacci said Maine will state its case clearly to keep the installations open by stressing their strategic and military importance as well as the profound impact the proposed action would have on the state’s economy.
Also Tuesday, Maine and New Hampshire’s congressional delegations sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressing “disbelief” with the list of targeted closures. The letter asked Rumsfeld to immediately release the department’s data that it used to come up with its list of recommendations.
Rumsfeld’s proposals will be reviewed by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which will make final recommendations to Bush by Sept. 8. If Bush accepts the panel’s list, it will go to Congress for final consideration before the end of the year.
Baldacci said he had spoken with BRAC head Anthony Principi, who assured the governor that the commission’s review will be independent. Baldacci said Principi pledged to personally visit the Maine installations and seemed open to the governor’s suggestion that he bring some of the nine members along.
The governor said the campaign to keep the bases open is strengthened by “the resilience of Maine workers who are not going to take things lying down and (will) fight back.”
“We’re going to get through this,” Baldacci said.
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