BRAC Vote Saves Groton

Cross-posted from The Stupid Shall Be Punished, where updates will be posted (I'll also post them here afterwards):

Late breaking news on The Day website says that the BRAC commission voted to keep Subase NLON open, with 6 of the 9 commissioners voting to remove the base from the list.

"Commissioner Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton made the motion to save the base, calling it “the flagship of the submarine community.”
"Commission Chairman Anthony J. Principi spoke in support of the motion, calling the Groton base “a center of excellence.”
“If we close New London,” he said, “we will never get it back.”
"The vote was 6-1-1 in favor of keeping the base open."

More info as it becomes available. (Of note, an earlier article in The Day was fairly pessimistic, so it looks like the commissioners kept their cards fairly close to their vests.)

Staying at PD...

Update 0929 24 Aug: The crawl across the bottom on the screen on CSPAN says the vote was 7-1-1, which makes more sense. The Day now has a list of the commissioners and how they voted, which confirms the 7 "yes" votes. (They also removed the incorrect section I quoted in the original entry.) Here's a CNN summary of today's votes; the Red River Army Depot was also removed from the list, and NAS Brunswick, Maine, was added.
The actual motion the commissioners voted on is here; it says that DoD "substantially deviated from" four (of eight) Final Selection Criteria and the Force Structure Plan. It looks like the vote on Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is coming up fairly soon.
The Boston Globe has some reaction from Connecticut politicians.

Update 1013 24 Aug: The Noonz Wire has more. Looks like the Portsmouth vote will be after lunch; I expect they'll accept the DoD recommendation to close the shipyard, though.

Update 1249 24 Aug: Man, I suck at predicting what the commission will do. It looks like they decided to keep Portsmouth Naval Shipyard open as well; here's another report from the Boston Globe on PNSY. Haven't heard what the vote was. As far as Groton goes, here's what the commissioners had to say before the vote.

posted by Bubblehead @ 7:56 AM