Mr. President, we all experience frustration with the fact that there are times when even the best intentioned efforts of this body lead to laws and actions that end in hurting the people we serve. It is also true that sometimes we take actions that benefit the majority of the American people at the expense of a minority. This body exists, however, at least in part because the framers of our Constitution believed that the people should always have a remedy against any injustice, including those stemming from the actions of the legislative and executive branches.

I believe that in the case of the Commission on Base Realignments and Closures such an injustice is taking place. Regardless of the broader merits of the Commission's work relating to other bases and facilities, it has reached recommendations relating to the transfer of the Army Information Systems Command from Fort Huachuca to Fort Devens that neither the Commission nor the command involved seem to be able to justify.

The problems involved are exemplified in a response that I have received from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Production and Logistics to questions I asked back in January. I will ask that my questions and the Assistant Secretary's answers be included in the Record at the end of these remarks, and I do not intend to discuss them in detail. I do wish to note, however, that the Commission repeatedly refused to answer any of these questions in its testimony to three different committees of Congress, and in private meetings with Members of the Congress. Further, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Production and Logistics finally provided answers only after the Senate Armed Services Committee formally asked the new Secretary of Defense to agree to provide such answers during his confirmation hearings.

The answers that the Assistant Secretary has provided however, are non-answers at best. With a few exceptions, they provide no useful information of any kind. They are the kind of non-response that is the very antithesis of the frank and open reply our Government owes its citizens.

This kind of response would bother me even if I believed that the Commission had done its job well in regard to this particular matter, or had the support of the command involved. In this instance, however, I have severe doubts that this is the case.

My office met on March 4, 1989, with the members of the Commission staff. It received a very different description of the reasons for the Commission's decision from those I received on April 3, from the Assistant Secretary. A member of the Commission staff indicated that the Commission twice over-ruled the staff's recommendations to close Fort Devens, and did so because it believed that the Army's only major east coast base with large-scale training facilities should not be closed as a matter of national priority.

Rather than use in the kind of integrated model and systematic approach to analysis presented in the Commission's reports and testimony, the Commission made its judgments as part of a package that was justified largely on the basis that the consolidation of command functions was a proper end in itself. Further, these decisions were made during the last days of the Commission's activity, and as part of a large package of decisions.

I am still investigating whether any of the Commission's conclusions relating to cost-benefits were accurate. It is already clear, however, that the U.S. Army Information Systems Command has concluded that the move will not benefit the U.S. Government.

General Rogers, the commander of ISC, has told my office that executing the Commission's recommendations will disrupt the operations of ISC for years because they failed to take into consideration a host of operational and cost factors.

For example, the staff of ISC put the true cost of military construction for moving the intelligence school and ISC at $92.15 million for Fort Devens and $162 million for Fort Huachuca. This compares with cost estimates by the Commission of $45 million for Fort Devens and $56 million for Fort Huachuca.

The Army officers in charge of the move, which are based at Fort Huachuca, also told my staff that the Commission ignored many of the real-world support and infrastructure costs necessary to make such a move feasible, and that these costs include changes in medical facilities, roads, service facilities, Corps of Engineers costs, and a number of other areas where the Army does not yet have even preliminary cost estimates. Further, the Commission seems to have used a wrong area factor for Fort Devens, and to have used a factor of 0.9 rather than 1.3. This sharply understated the true cost of locating in the Fort Devens area.

General Rogers also had told my office that neither he nor the commander at Fort Devens were ever explicitly consulted about the merits of moving ISC to Fort Devens, and that if he had been consulted, he would have stated that Fort Devens would be the least desirable facility for the consolidation of ISC on the east coast.

These cost issues may stem in part from the Commission's use of the dated and inaccurate information in a study called the facilities vision study. In any case, the working data provided to me by the Office of the Secretary of Defense indicate that the Commission seems to have rushed this particular recommendation through without adequate validation of its cost estimates. Further, I have still to determine whether it used a much longer payback period than for other closings and realignments--in fact, a payback period that seems to have been designed to find a cost justification, no matter how forced--and used manpower numbers that are internally inconsistent and disagree with those that would have been provided by ISC.

ISC also indicates that at least 80 percent of its best trained and most skilled personnel will not make the move to Fort Devens, and that the end result will disrupt ISC's operations for years. It has concluded that it cannot hope to attract the skills and quality of personnel it needs with existing salaries and grade structures because of the higher cost in the Fort Devens area.

The Commission also called for the relocation of people at Fort McPherson that do not even belong to ISC, and for the move of personnel at Fort Belvoir that perform vital service functions in the Washington area--a move that will cost ISC virtually all of the software writers now in the area because they will not move.

There also are a wide range of important costs that the Commission chose not to examine. These include the community impact costs, retraining costs, infrastructure costs, and the true costs of obtaining and maintaining a suitable technical staff in an area with much higher living costs and housing costs that are two to three times higher than in the area around Fort Huachuca.

I have no real hope that these issues will lead to legislative delays in implementing the Commission's recommendations. It is already clear that a resolution of disapproval has no chance of passage in either House. I believe, however, that it is important that these issues be made part of the record. Further, I have joined Senator DeConcini and Congressman Kolbe in asking for an investigation of all these issues and of the merits of the Commission's recommendations relating to the realignments affecting Fort Huachuca and Fort Devens.

I do hope that if the GAO concludes that the Commission's recommendations are deeply flawed, as I think that it may, this body will consider suitable efforts to remedy the situation. While there is merit in the packaging of all the Commission's recommendations, we should be prepared to correct a mistaken recommendation when it can be proved to be wrong by a neutral body. We may be able to delegate the authority of Congress to the Commission, but we cannot delegate our responsibility.

More broadly, I hope that if the concept of a similar Commission is ever again raised in this body, our collective memory will recall the kind of problem I am describing today. It is one thing for a Commission to be independent, but it is quite another for it to fail to properly justify its conclusions. This is particularly true when the initial reaction of a Commission is to classify its work and records, and to deny public access to its work.

Any future Commissions must, at a minimum, keep full and comprehensive records and have the responsibility of making them public immediately after they reach their conclusions. No reputable Commission can ever be free of the responsibility to justify its work to our citizens or the need to be a part of open Government.

I ask that the material to which I earlier referred be printed in the Record.