Members review material during EAC committee meeting

To support the Defense Economic Adjustment Program, President George H.W. Bush established the Economic Adjustment Committee (EAC) in 1992. The EAC is composed of 22 federal departments and agencies, which have technical and financial assistance programs available to assist communities, businesses, and/or workers with responding to DoD-driven impacts. In 2005, President George W. Bush named the OEA director as executive director of EAC and OEA, responsible for providing the necessary support for the EAC.

The EAC helps coordinate federal intergovernmental assistance to local communities and thus minimize the impact of defense program changes. Specifically, the EAC:

• Coordinates federal interagency and intergovernmental assistance to support the Defense Economic Adjustment Program and to help states and communities respond to Defense-triggered economic impacts
• Develops procedures that assist affected states and locales
• Provides a clearinghouse for information exchanges among federal, state, and local officials involved in economic adjustment activities. These resources touch beneficiaries from the federal level to the individual citizens impacted by downsizing or growth resulting from Defense activities such as base closures, realignments, and similar modifications

Through September 30, 2004, the U.S. Federal government had collectively provided about $1.9 billion in assistance to local communities in response to the 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995 BRAC rounds. This assistance supported worker placement assistance, base reuse planning and property acquisition, site improvements, demolition, and other hard construction activity.

Highlights of federal government support to local communities include:

• 223 million dollars provided by the Department of Labor (DoL) to help communities retrain dislocated workers
• 611 million dollars provided by the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administrations (EDA) to assist communities with infrastructure improvements and other site activities
• 760 million dollars provided by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to assist with converting former military airfields to civilian use
• 280 million dollars provided by DoD’s Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA) to help communities to plan and carry out adjustment strategies, including base reuse

Members of the EAC can assist local communities with loans, grants, loan guarantees, guidance, outreach, and public benefit conveyance (sponsorship for transfer of surplus federal property to eligible state and local governments for public purpose).

For more information about the coordinated federal resources OEA provides local communities, please view the following publications:

• Federal Sponsoring Agencies and Public Benefit Conveyances
• Coordinated Federal Assistance for BRAC Communities
• Federal Assistance to Impacted Communities catalog