ME/NH Congressional Delegation Outraged by Delay of Essential Data From Defense Department for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard: Letter
ME/NH CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION OUTRAGED BY DELAY OF ESSENTIAL DATA FROM DEFENSE DEPARTMENT FOR PORTSMOUTH NAVAL SHIPYARD
Maine and New Hampshire's congressional delegation sent a letter today to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld urging the expeditious release of essential data used to justify their recommended list of military facilities for closure. The Department of Defense released its list of facilities last Friday, which included the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
The text of the letter is below:
Dear Mr. Secretary:
We are writing to express our disbelief that when the Department of Defense (DoD) released its Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) recommendations on May 13th, it did not also release the comprehensive set of data used to justify its recommendations. According to Under Secretary Michael Wynne, these data will not be released until the end of this week. We ask that these data be provided immediately.
This deviation from the announced process disadvantages the communities that are facing the closure or realignment of a military facility, as well as the BRAC Commission charged with examining DoD's recommendations. Communities and the Commission are already facing a compressed time schedule during which the Commission will be taking input from the public. With this delay, the communities and the Commission now have one less week of precious time in which to analyze the data needed to make their case, and review DoD's conclusions, respectively.
Meanwhile, officials from the Department and the Services will spend this week defending their justifications in public before the Commission. This is tantamount to allowing a prosecutor to argue his case before the jury before the defendant knows what evidence, if any, will be presented. Such a situation would not be permissible in a court of law and it should not be tolerated in the BRAC process either.
Again, we call on the Department to make the BRAC data available to Congress, the BRAC Commission, and the public immediately. We further request that the Department not delay in providing subsequent necessary and relevant information that is requested by the BRAC Commission and interested parties.
Sincerely,
Senator Judd Gregg
Senator Olympia Snowe
Senator Susan Collins
Senator John Sununu
Congressman Tom Allen
Congressman Jeb Bradley
http://www.house.gov/bradley/20050517_main.html