NM scrambles to find a four-leaf Clovis.
Richard Pryor had it easy. All his character had to do in Brewster's Millions was spend $30 million in 30 days in order to inherit $300 million. But if he failed in his quest, he could always go back to being a minor league baseball player. Or smoking crack. Whatever.
New Mexico has a bit more daunting task ahead. It has $300,000 to spend fighting the recommended closure of Cannon Air Force Base over the next four months. But if the State fails in its quest to overturn the Department of Defense recommendation, the Office of the Governor estimates New Mexico will lose more than $210 million a year in economic impact.
All without John Candy by its side.
What the State does have is $300,000 in contingency appropriations that Gov. Bill Richardson set aside during the last legislative session in the event one of New Mexico's military installations was threatened by the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission.
Contingency no more. After the DOD announced its initial recommendations on May 13, Richardson put the $300,000 into play through the New Mexico Military Base Planning Commission, announced a May 16 town hall meeting in Clovis-home to Cannon-and vowed to personally lobby members of the BRAC Commission.
The threat of a base closure in New Mexico wasn't entirely unexpected however. After taking office, Richardson appointed a one-man Office of Military Base Planning and Support, which began operations in January 2003 with an annual budget of about $150,000. Now that man-OMBPS Director Hanson Scott-is in charge of gearing a statewide effort to battle the closure of Cannon, which the Office of the Governor estimates could cause a total loss of more than 7,000 jobs and $210 million a year.
"Right now we're putting all our focus on efforts to save Cannon Air Force Base," Scott says. "We issued two requests [for funds], one for lobby and advocacy and one for staff support."
Scott is currently negotiating with firms bidding for both contracts in advance of a BRAC regional meeting on June 24 in Clovis. In July and August, the BRAC Commission will make its amendments to the original list of recommendations before the final recommendations are submitted to President George W Bush, who will put the stamp on the final BRAC decisions in September.
