WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is about to shift into high gear for a two-year process it hopes will close one of every five bases in the country, maybe even more. That is as many as it shuttered in four grim previous closure rounds — combined.

Sending even more shivers down the spines of communities near bases is a Pentagon directive specifically ordering that "all military installations within the United States and its territories will be examined as part of this process."

So everything potentially is on the chopping block in the new 2005 closure round — including Hill Air Force Base, Utah's largest employer. At stake is its 23,000 jobs and annual payroll of $750 million, which the military says generates $2 billion in local economic spinoffs, but base promoters say is closer to $9 billion.

"If Hill closes, we would not only be in a recession, we would be in a depression, and it could take us 20 years to recover," says Vickie McCall, president of the Utah Defense Alliance, a group chartered by the state to help defend Hill. "The base spends as much in Utah as the state government itself. Losing it would affect everyone."

Former Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, who has tried to boost his current gubernatorial campaign by saying his experience in Congress could help him as governor defend the base, adds that if Hill closed, "I think you would see one out of every five houses (in communities near the base) go up for sale immediately."

But the Pentagon is looking more at its own financial woes than at others'. It hopes to save $7 billion a year by closing unneeded or inefficient bases and to put the savings into better equipment, training and operations.

Hansen expects Pentagon officials to be ruthless in making upcoming cuts "because they know they are not going to get any more (closure) rounds from Congress anytime soon and they are lucky they got this one. So this is their last cut at the pie."

Fair process?

The review process is beginning now, and decisions will be final by late 2005. The process is designed to keep out politics and ensure that bases with the most military value remain. "But we've learned it doesn't always work that way, so we have to be prepared for anything," McCall says.

For example, the North Area of Tooele Army Depot in Utah was closed in the 1993 round, despite having a brand-new, best-in-the-nation facility to repair and maintain large vehicles, which Utah politicians wrongly thought would save it at the time.

Hill came close to closure in 1995 despite then having the highest rankings among the Air Force's five repair-and-supply air logistics centers. Even when it survived, former President Bill Clinton tried to sidestep orders by technically closing two competing bases, but in reality keeping them open by converting their existing workforces into private contractors. He lost a protracted battle with Congress over that.