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WASHINGTON - The base-closing commission voted Tuesday to add a handful of military facilities in eight states and the nation's capital to the hundreds that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to close or shrink.
The Navy Broadway Complex in San Diego and the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, now are on the list of installations to be closed. Under the commission's actions, the Naval Master Jet Base at the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina would see even more force reductions than the Pentagon proposed or would be shut down.
Even small facilities were not immune. With an eye on possibly merging administrative, education and medical services, the commission voted to include several small installations in Colorado, Ohio, Indiana, California, Virginia and Washington, D.C., for consideration.
The Galena Airport Forward Operating Location in Alaska also now is on the list for either closure or downsizing.
The votes showed the independent commission's willingness to diverge - at least somewhat - from the plan Rumsfeld submitted in May, when he proposed closing or reducing forces at 62 major domestic bases and hundreds of smaller installations.
"This commission knows what it is talking about and is not a rubber stamp. We are an independent check on the power of the secretary to close and realign military bases," commission Chairman Anthony Principi said after the vote.
Some in Congress had feared the panel would simply sign off on Rumsfeld's plan without looking at options.
By adding bases to the list, the commission gave itself more flexibility to change what the Pentagon proposed as it considers shifting pieces of the mammoth domestic base network to better suit today's defense needs.
The panel will make final decisions next month about which bases to propose for closing or reductions, with President Bush and Congress making a binding decision in the fall.