''If you can forestall the closures for six months, a year, at that point does the federal government say, 'Enough already, we'll deal with someone else?' " said Hershfield, who has worked with military cases. ''Oftentimes, in litigation, the ultimate strategy is you often win by delay."
Reilly plans a lawsuit to thwart Otis closure
Sees 'tough fight'; effort was planned
By Michael Levenson and Lisa Wangsness, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff | August 28, 2005
Girding for what he described as a ''tough fight," Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday that he would file suit in federal court to prevent the US Department of Defense from closing Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod.
Reilly made the announcement a day after the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted to accept the Pentagon's plan to close Otis, and to send its 18 F-15 fighter jets to Barnes Municipal Airport Air Guard Station in Westfield, Western Massachusetts.
Reilly said he had been planning for weeks to bring the lawsuit, and had been working behind the scenes with Governor Mitt Romney, Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, and the state's congressmen.
Reilly said he plans to use many of the same arguments cited in a decision handed down Friday by a federal district judge in Philadelphia, who ruled that the Pentagon lacked the authority to close an Air National Guard base in that state without the approval of the governor, Edward G. Rendell.
Governors are considered the commanders-in-chief of their state's National Guard units; Reilly said the Pentagon and the Base Realignment and Closure Commission had ignored this.
''States need to have some say in matters of not only their security but also their economy, and jobs, and families," Reilly told reporters outside his office in Boston. ''And the people that live in this state need to have a say in what is happening to their lives."
A Romney spokeswoman, Julie Teer, said he would cooperate with Reilly, his main Democratic rival for the governor's office.
''Governor Romney will be working with Attorney General Reilly to review all legal options on the table to keep Otis open," Teer said.
Reilly said gubernatorial politics would not be an issue.
''There are matters that transcend politics and this is one of them," he said. ''We are in total agreement here."
On Cape Cod, news of the lawsuit brought a glimmer of hope to residents who were reeling from the vote Friday to close the base. Otis supports 505 jobs in Falmouth and residents recall its 102d Fighter Wing scrambling planes for New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
''We're not giving up until the last gate is locked and the last plane leaves," said Dino Mitrokostas, owner of Dino's Sports Bar, a hangout that draws many workers from Otis.
''I have a saying -- there's right, wrong, and legal," Mitrokostas said. ''It was right to keep the base open, it was wrong to close it, and now I guess we're going to fight it legally."
Others tempered their praise.
''I wouldn't say it's futile -- the opportunity is there," said the Mashpee fire chief, George Baker, who is also a member of the Otis Coalition, a grass-roots group formed to save the base. ''It's worthwhile to keep fighting to save the resources we have there."
It might be the last hope for many who want to see Otis remain an active part of the 22,000-acre Massachusetts Military Reservation, residents said.
''My feeling is anything we can possibly do to save the base, I'm for," said John J. Cahalane, a Mashpee selectman.
''I can't understand the thinking in Washington, the fact they're closing it to start with," Cahalane added.
Yesterday, the commission completed its work and said its estimate for savings from the closures might be billions less than the $48.8 billion the Pentagon had hoped to save over 20 years.
That would be because the commission had voted to preserve some of the bases that the Pentagon report had recommended for closure.
The commission is expected to give President Bush its list of recommended closures and realignments on Sept. 8.
Bush can then approve or reject the entire list before it goes to Congress, but neither he nor Congress can make changes. Otis is slated to close in 2008, according to Pentagon documents.
Reilly said he had not decided when to file the lawsuit, who might be named as defendant, or to which court he might bring the case. He said it would not be an easy battle to win in court.
''We know it's going to be a tough fight, but it's a fight worth having for those families and those people and those jobs and that area of the state that's going to be impacted by this decision," he said.
Reilly said he might merge his lawsuit with others challenging the plan to shut or consolidate 62 major military bases and hundreds of smaller facilities nationwide.
That plan is still being reviewed and voted on by the BRAC; bases in Portsmouth, N.H., and Groton, Conn., have been spared, but one in Brunswick, Maine, would be closed.
On Friday, M. Jodi Rell, Connecticut's governor, said she would sue to oppose the removal of fighter jets at Bradley Air National Guard Base near Hartford.
Part of the strategy might be to kill the closures by stalling them, said Edward S. Hershfield, a lawyer at Brown Rudnick in Boston.
''If you can forestall the closures for six months, a year, at that point does the federal government say, 'Enough already, we'll deal with someone else?' " said Hershfield, who has worked with military cases. ''Oftentimes, in litigation, the ultimate strategy is you often win by delay."
Losing is a possibility that frightens many on Cape Cod.
Andrew Elliott, 32, who works at Mashpee Wine & Spirits, said he is worried about his friend, a helicopter mechanic at Otis.
''He just got shipped off to Iraq," he said. ''When he comes back he won't have a job." |
