THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 19, 1994 TAG: 9411190460
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Nearly 90 percent of the military installations scheduled to close from the first two rounds of base closings remain in the hands of the federal government or state or local governments, a new General Accounting Office report says.
As a result, the report says, the revenue from pending and completed property sales from these base closings has amounted to only $92 million so far, well behind the pace needed to reach the $1.2 billion in total sales the Defense Department had estimated it would eventually receive. The government plans to use the proceeds to reduce the federal deficit.
The report, which examined 37 of the 120 bases closed by independent commissions in 1988 and 1991, dispels any notion that closed military bases are being sold to private buyers for hard cash, one of the program's original goals. Under the base-closing law, properties can be put up for sale only after all governmental agencies and advocates for the homeless have been offered them first.
The accounting office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that 88 percent of the properties it reviewed will remain in the hands of the military or be transferred at no charge to other federal, state or local agencies. About 5 percent of the land will be sold. The status of the remainder has not yet been determined, the report said.
A senior Pentagon official acknowledged on Thursday night that the original estimates of property sales revenue of $4.1 billion were based on unrealistic estimates of the market value of land littered with unexploded bombs or poisoned with 40 years of military industrial waste.
The reuse of closed military bases has been a simmering political issue that may boil up now that Republicans will take control of both houses of Congress. The Republicans have been more willing to sell former military properties to private buyers than Democrats.
KEYWORDS: MILITARY BASE BASE CLOSING by CNB