One of the strongest examples of how a commission report can overcome problems with a legislative process involves the Base Realignment and Closure Process that started in 1988, and has now gone through five rounds. The challenge was that the number of active duty US military personnel had rise to about 3.5 million during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, but then had fallen to about 2 million by the later part of the 1980s. It was obvious that the number of military bases should also decline, but the US Congress had a very hard time doing it. Any Congressperson who had a military base in or near their district or state would not vote for cutting their own base; moreover, they would not vote for cutting bases in other places–out of fear that the base in their own district might be the next to do. Literally no military bases were close between 1977 and 1987.
The idea behind the Base Realignment and Closure Process was to have an outside commission draw up a list of bases to be closed and a timeline for closing them. Congress could then vote for or against the proposed list as a whole–but Congress committed in advance not to amend the list. Chandler S. Reilly and Christopher J. Coyne bring us up to date in ” The Political Economy of Military Base Redevelopment” (Eastern Economic Journal, 2025, 51: 7–26). As they write: “Since the initial round in 1988, four subsequent BRAC rounds were completed in 1991, 1993, 1995, and 2005, resulting in the closure of over a hundred major military bases, with the property transferred to local communities for redevelopment.”
But while the process has facilitated base closures, Reilly and Coyne point out that the visible hand of political clout has continued to play a role in the redevelopment process. They write:
In most cases, base property is not simply auctioned off with the rights to that property transferred to private parties. Instead, a political process governs base redevelopment from start to finish. Some forms of property transfer, such as Economic Development Conveyances (EDC) and Public Benefit Transfers (PBT), follow predetermined redevelopment paths with the intention of stimulating economic development or benefiting certain segments of the community. These rules incentivize redevelopment along predetermined lines which results in property being zoned for specific uses over many years. … [B]ase repurposing hinges on a political process where interest groups compete not by offering the highest market bid for reuse rights, but rather through waste-generating rent-seeking activities.
These zoning decisions may represent some mixture of special-interest lobbying, political clout, and attempts to pass costs to others. For example, the California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) was established after the closure of Fort Ord on that site. There had not been any previous plan for the establishment of a Cal State campus in that area; earlier reports noted that existing Cal State campuses had plenty of space for projected enrollments. But if the state was getting the land and buildings for “free” (ignoring opportunity cost of alternative uses, of course) and the federal government was chipping in with some spending to build out the rest of the campus, it seemed like a good idea.
Political processes can even lead to gridlock in redevelopment. The interests of thos living right beside the former base may not be aligned with the interests of those at the regional or state level (for example, should the base become a nature preserve, a shopping mall, a mixed-use development, or an industrial park?). It can take years, or in some cases decades, for these interjurisdictional issues to be resolved. The authors write: “As of 2017, there remained over 70 thousand acres of base land that had yet to be disposed, representing around 19 percent of the total acreage of closed bases over the five rounds …”
The authors suggest the merits of auctioning the land from base closures, which has the advantages of straightforwardness–although one expects that politicians would still push to play a heavy role. There is probably an intermediate approach in which politicians work with a master planner who would designate some of the land for parks or transportation or other uses, and then auctioning off the rest with the framework established. But when “free” land and buildings seem to be available, it’s not easy for local politicians to take a step back.
An obvious question is whether the commission approach might be used to resolve other logjammed issues. Back in the early 1980s, for example, when the Social Security system was verging on insolvency, a National Commission on Social Security Reform headed by Alan Greenspan proposed a set of changes that became the basis for a 1983 law which made the system solvent up until the early 2030s. Maybe it’s time for another such commission? Or imagine if Congress designated a target for spending cuts and another target for tax increases, and then set up two committees to propose how to meet that target. In this case, the arrangement might be that Congress could vote for or against, but any amendments suggesting more spending or lower taxes in one area would need to be include a revenue-neutal spending cut or tax increase in another area, to remain within the overall targets. Yes, it would be nice if Congress could debate and vote to address these kinds of issues like adults. But perhaps other arrangements are needed.
