BY SUE M. MORGAN
Staff Writer
TRENTON — The Pentagon has underestimated the military value of Fort Monmouth, and the area’s two colleges and a base advocacy group are on board with the state government to prove it.
Monmouth University, Brookdale Community College and the Patriots Alliance, a private group of Fort Monmouth subcontractors, will join with the Governor’s Commission to Support and Enhance New Jersey’s Military and Coast Guard Installations to undertake a $200,000 study to review the finer points of the Pentagon’s recommendation to shutter the local base.
The recommended shutdown, which was announced publicly on May 13, would come under the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) process, a federal program that periodically targets certain military installations for shutdown, consolidation and restructuring.
The study to be conducted over the next three months is intended to show the “military value” of Fort Monmouth to the Pentagon and to the BRAC commission, an independent panel of government experts now reviewing the recommendations, according to a press release issued by the office of acting Gov. Richard J. Codey.
“Military value,” one of the criteria used by the Pentagon in selecting bases for closure or restructuring, has been described as a base’s ability to provide essential functions to service personnel in the battlefield.
Fort Monmouth is known primarily for researching and developing communications and electronics equipment used by soldiers and all branches of the military, according to area legislators.
Codey announced on May 24 that the state would initiate the study to be led by the Governor’s Commission and to involve both colleges as well as the Patriots Alliance.
Planned as a “comprehensive analysis of the data and assumptions used by the Pentagon to justify the closure of Fort Monmouth,” Codey stated in a press release that the study “will provide independent information” to reverse the Defense Department decision.
“The federal government made a major mistake in recommending that Fort Monmouth be closed,” Codey said. “With this study, we will make it clear to the BRAC commission that closing Fort Monmouth is wrong for the military and wrong for New Jersey.
“We have no intentions of taking this lying down,” Codey continued. “Now that the Pentagon has made its case, we will go through it point by point and show that closing Fort Monmouth is the wrong decision.”
If the BRAC commission concurs with the Pentagon, and if President George W. Bush and Congress approve the recommendations later this year, the majority of Fort Monmouth’s more than 5,300 military and civilian employees would be relocated to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Md.
Other employees of the Fort’s various commands would be transferred to installations at other locations in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and West Point, N.Y., under the Pentagon plan.
Altogether about 22,000 jobs, both at the fort and with military contractors who work on base, could leave the area or be lost if Fort Monmouth closes, according to U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-12th District) and Frank Pallone (D-6th District), two area legislators leading the charge to spare the installation from shutdown.
Monmouth University’s president, retired Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney II, who chairs the state commission that is leading the study, defended the value of that workforce.
“The story we want to tell is that New Jersey’s workforce has the brainpower that is needed by the military,” Gaffney said.
“We have put together a team that will gather the necessary independent information to refute the Pentagon’s decision and support our position,” he continued. “I am confident that when the data is analyzed, our case will be clear and the Pentagon’s assumptions will be shown to be inaccurate.”
A consortium of military and industry analysts will be consulted to help carry out the study of what products are produced at the base as a means of showing military value to the Pentagon, according to Codey’s release.
The Pentagon has estimated that moving Fort Monmouth’s extensive communications and electronics commands to Aberdeen Proving Ground will cost $822 million, yet save about $143 million over 20 years, according to information released by Pallone and Holt.
But the state commission and its partners will attempt to dispute that as well by comparing utility and health care costs between Monmouth and Ocean counties and the communities of Harford and Aberdeen in Maryland, Codey’s release states. Educational systems in both areas will also be compared.
Pentagon officials have justified the move to Maryland by arguing that utilities and health care will be less costly than in New Jersey, Holt and Pallone have said.
Besides the Aberdeen Proving Ground, those conducting the study also plan to visit the other bases in Maryland, Ohio and Virginia where the fort’s missions would be relocated, the release states.
How many civilian personnel from Fort Monmouth — as well as who — would actually relocate to new sites will be identified in the study, Codey’s office states.
Both Holt and Pallone, along with U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) have argued that only about 10 to 15 percent of the civilian workforce at Fort Monmouth can be expected to sell their homes and uproot their families, should the Pentagon recommendation go through.
Meanwhile, New Jersey’s other representative in the Senate, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) described Fort Monmouth as the soldiers’ defense against the roadside bombs used by opposing forces in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking to a group of reporters, officials and onlookers during a press conference on Friday in Sea Bright, Lautenberg pointed out that Fort Monmouth is “a place where much of the science is developed to diffuse roadside bombs.”
With Pallone standing nearby, Lautenberg also pledged to fight with his congressional colleagues to protect Fort Monmouth.
“ ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,’ ” he sang, before realizing that the military song predated most of those in attendance.
Nonetheless, Lautenberg made his point.
“Don’t interrupt the flow of ammunition,” he said. “We’re going to fight darn hard before they close the door on Fort Monmouth.”
As part of the review process, the BRAC commissioners are scheduled to tour Fort Monmouth on June 9. A regional hearing on the closure of the fort and other bases in the region will be held on July 8 in Baltimore.
The BRAC commission is expected to forward its recommendations to Bush by Sept. 8.

