Chamber to host Army officials on possible Fort Jackson cuts

Army officials will visit Columbia next month in a “listening session” that could affect the future of Fort Jackson as the military shrinks after 13 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce has scheduled the event for 2 p.m. Feb. 26 at Shandon Baptist Church. Gov. Nikki Haley will appear prior to public comments to Army officials about the importance of Fort Jackson to Columbia and the region.

The military pumps more than $19 billion into the South Carolina economy each year, according to a University of South Carolina report released Wednesday. Fort Jackson – the Army’s largest basic training base, turning out about 47,000 new soldiers each year –contributes significantly to that total, mostly in the Midlands.

An automatic $1.2 trillion in budget cuts, half to the military, half to domestic spending, mandated by Congress in 2011 as a result of the debt-ceiling fight, would force the Army to shrink to 420,000 soldiers in 2016 from 518,000 today.

As a result, the Army has asked 30 military installations nationwide to assess the impact of deep cuts as part of a worst-case scenario – in Fort Jackson’s case, the loss of 3,100 of its roughly 7,000 employees.

Base commander Maj. Gen. Bradley Becker has said he doesn’t think that any cuts at the fort will be nearly as deep as the 3,100 jobs, 2,400 of which would be active-duty soldiers. And he has said the fort possibly could pick up training missions from other installations as a result of base realignment.

If all of the cuts are implemented, however, the number of new soldiers trained at Fort Jackson would drop to about 17,000 a year, Becker has said. Another 27,000 soldiers receiving advanced training in tenant missions, such as the drill sergeant school and the chaplain’s school, also would be heavily affected, he has said.

The chamber estimated that loss of the 3,100 jobs would result in:

“We want Fort Jackson to train soldiers for another 100 years,” the chamber said in a news release. “We need to convince (Army officials) that we are the most military-friendly community in America and we want to protect and grow the mission of Fort Jackson.

“We are counting on you to be one of the 2,200-plus people who pack the pews at Shandon Baptist Church to show how much we care,” the chamber said.

This story was originally published January 28, 2015 at 10:32 PM.