Fort Leonard Wood could see additional 5,400 job cuts

With 1,200 job cuts to be made through September at Fort Leonard Wood, a U.S. Army study now estimates an additional 5,400 jobs could be lost at the Missouri military base by 2020.

Joe Driskill, executive director of Leonard Wood Institute, informed elected officials and residents about the potential cuts and the Sustainability Ozarks Partnership's (SOP) current efforts to make the public aware of them at a recent meeting at Osage Beach City Hall.

SOP is a non-profit organization advocating growth and support of Fort Leonard Wood in areas including quality of life, health care, economic development, education, utility infrastructure, transportation and military affairs.

Driskill also informed attendees of a public listening session at 5:30 p.m. on March 2 at Fort Leonard Wood's Nutter Fieldhouse that will allow U.S. Army leaders to hear public comments regarding the job cut proposal.

The job cut proposals at Fort Leonard Wood stemmed from reductions and realignments required to achieve the savings specified in the 2011 Budget Control Act and went into effect following a federal government budget sequester in 2013, Driskill explained. The sequester will lower spending by approximately $1.1 trillion from pre-sequester levels over an eight-year period from 2013-21. The cuts are split evenly between defense and non-defense categories.

To achieve the savings, the U.S. Army proposed to reduce the size of its end-strength force from a post-9/11 peak of approximately 562,000 to 490,000 among more than 20 installations, including Fort Leonard Wood. In 2013, the U.S. Army conducted a federally required study, the Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment, to analyze potential socioeconomic and environmental impacts associated with the reductions. Part of the analysis included public comment, from a listening session about 1,200 attended at Fort Leonard Wood, as well as thousands of written comments regarding the proposal.

Driskill said an announcement was made in late 2013 that Fort Leonard Wood would see a 1,200-job cut through September of this year, opposed to the maximum 3,900 initially proposed in the PEA. Since the PEA was completed, the Department of Defense's fiscal guidance has continued to change, and future end-strength of the U.S. Army now must be reduced even further - possibly as low as 420,000.

The U.S. Army's federally-required Supplemental PEA of 2014 examines data at an increased 30 installations - again including Fort Leonard Wood - and doubling the maximum reductions, Driskill said. He noted the SPEA does not necessarily reflect actual or projected losses, but provides an assessment of the possible impacts.

The current SPEA target for Fort Leonard Wood is a cut of 5,400 personnel from a direct baseline population of 9,161, with about 80 percent of those cuts in uniformed jobs and 20 percent in civilian positions.

Nine additional bases were included for possible reductions in the SPEA that did not see PEA potential reductions, such as Fort Leavenworth in Kansas with a proposed 2,500 job cut maximum from its 5,004 direct baseline population.

"To put it in perspective, we have just under 5,000 people for our population. Everything you see in Osage Beach would be gone," said Osage Beach Mayor Penny Lyons following Driskill's presentation about the 5,400 maximum proposed job cuts at Fort Leonard Wood. "That is just the wage earner, not counting the families."

Driskill said they hope to see 2,000 attend the March 2 public listening session at Fort Leonard Wood, where he, fellow SOP administrators, Fort Leonard Wood staff, legislators and residents will share how these proposed cuts could affect the base and its surrounding communities economically and socially.

He explained the U.S. Army wants to make clear to the general public these are proposed cuts and might not be the final outcome, and the cuts would be spread over a year or two. However, even though the government has allowed lead time before taking action, it also gives people time to make their voices heard on the issue, Driskill said.

"We know the cuts are coming, but we don't know exactly how large they are. The Army is prepped to take their share of the burden for these defense cuts," Driskill said. "We typically react to things when it is too late. One of the things I have learned in dealing with the government, you have long lead times in dealing with these issues. We have the opportunity to do something to help affect it. ... We are doing things right now to improve our region through advocating and showing up to the meeting to show the Army leadership in Washington what we think. We have a strong message with some good data."

Some of that data, Driskill said, is included in the SPEA study, including projected negative impacts in a seven-county region surrounding Fort Leonard Wood, including Phelps, Laclede, Texas, Camden, Miller, Maries and Pulaski counties. Projected economic impact includes an 8 percent reduction in annual sales of an estimated $318.2 million, 3.8 percent decrease in annual income of about $299.8 million, 6.5 percent drop in employment of about 6,587 jobs and 5.6 percent reduction in population - or about 13,388 residents.

The population of Fort Leonard Wood's immediate four-county region, which excludes Camden, Miller and Maries counties, is roughly 168,000, Driskill said.

With the help of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, a study Driskill's team organized indicates Fort Leonard Wood is the state's fifth-largest employer with a collective workforce of about 16,000 that includes the highest U.S. Marine Corps presence on a non-Marine base, international officers and other defense and civilian workers. Fort Leonard Wood comes in behind top-ranked Wal-Mart. The second largest is the University of Missouri, followed by Washington University and the U.S. Postal Service.

Fort Leonard Wood has grown from a small basic-training post to a premier Army Center of Excellence that trains 80,000 to 90,000 military and civilians each year. Driskill said it is one of four bases in the country that provides basic training for military service and is a "school house" for all service men and women to train in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare. It also houses the U.S. Army Military Police School on its campus, among other services including a hospital, airport and other training facilities.

For information about the upcoming meeting, call the SOP at 573-329-8502, email [email protected] or visit sustainableozarks.org.