Sometime between now and May 16, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will release a list of military bases the department wants closed, labeling it unneeded infrastructure that wastes billions of dollars annually.

Community leaders in affected areas will express shock and anger.

Paid lobbyists will begin pumping out reasons why a new nine-member Base Realignment and Closure Commission should spare particular bases from the final list to be sent the White House by Sept. 8.

And tens of thousands of military retirees who rely on these bases for medical care, cost-free drugs, discount shopping and more will wonder whether to pull up roots and moveÝnear a base not on the BRAC list.

The size of retiree migrations from past BRAC rounds is a mystery. Defense officials who oversee installations say they have no such data. Neither does the Government Accountability Office, which carefully studied the impact of previous BRAC rounds.

But there's general agreement among BRAC experts that the next round of closings should trigger smaller retiree migrations than past rounds.

They point to two healthcare options enacted since BRAC 1995 that should ease the expense for retirees of living without a base. They are TRICARE for Life, the robust insurance supplement to Medicare for service elderly, and the increasingly popular TRICARE mail order pharmacy plan.

They also cite a boom in commercial discount stores, such as Wal-Mart and Price Club, which now compete for customers with military base stores.

Several Arizona cities commissioned a study in 2002 to measure the effect of nearby bases on their economies. The study contractor, Maguire Company of Phoenix, found it reasonable in conducting its analysis to assume that 25 percent of military retirees living within 50 miles of a base were so “linked” to its amenities that they would leave the area if the base closed.

The 25 percent was no more than a guess, the study suggested.

Yet a professor at Rutgers University, Michael J. Lahr, used the figure last year in a study for the governor of New Jersey to estimate the impact of base closures in that state. Lahr conceded in his report that he was unable to find any information on the “probable proportion of military retirees” who would relocate “if all military bases in New Jersey were shuttered.”

Lahr wrote that he was using the 25 percent estimate used in Arizona for his own economic models because there “is no reason to believe that New Jersey-base military retirees would behave any differently.”

Sociology professor Mark Fagan at Jackson State University in Jackson, Ala., said, “With Wal-Mart super-centers and with internet shopping,” he said the financial impact for retirees of losing base access “has gone down.”

The lack of hard facts about retiree migration from BRAC rounds shouldn't obscure some harsh realities. One reason retirees might not flee is housing prices often plummet in the months following release of a BRAC list.

New BRAC Commission Chairman Anthony Principi didn't shy away from such perceptions at a May 3 inaugural hearing on Capitol Hill.

“The ripples of the proposals” to be announced this month, Principi said, “will be tsunamis in the communities they hit.”

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