No BRAC likely until 2019, official says

  • Published
  • By Argen Duncan
  • Nucleus editor
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  The director of the state Office of Military Base Planning and Support expects no federal base realignment and closure movement this year, although he warned the Kirtland Partnership Committee that one could come in 2019.

Eric Kivi spoke at the KPC breakfast Tuesday morning at Embassy Suites hotel.

"There's no appetite in Congress for a BRAC in the near future," he said.

However, the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act contains language that would allow such a move later. The Government Accounting Office is reviewing the act and should finish in April, Kivi said.

The U.S. House and Senate are both quietly drafting fiscal year 2017 legislation that would bring up base realignment and closure in 2019, he continued, but the federal government doesn't yet have a strategy for making BRAC decisions.

Kivi said the Senate Armed Services Committee is looking at acquisition reform and changes to the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which dictates how the military is organized.