Bob Leib, Kent Menser, Phil Alperson and Wanda Plumer are the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) coordinators for Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties respectively. Their job is to assess and address transportation problems, housing issues, workforce needs, economic development opportunities and every other looming issue — right down to solid waste management — as defense agencies and their contractors prepare to create more than  37,000 jobs in the region as a result of the BRAC process.

BOB LEIB  >  Anne Arundel County
Contact: 410.222.1227, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND: During 22 years in the U.S. Navy, Leib served as executive officer on a destroyer, chief staff officer for a destroyer squadron, congressional liaison with the Secretary of the Navy and a chief financial officer at the U.S. Naval Academy. After he retired, Leib became the business and government services director for Anne Arundel County public schools.

TACKLING BRAC: Leib has a standard reassurance for people concerned that BRAC will gridlock traffic around Fort George G. Meade: “Look at Northern Virginia.  It’s not going to be like that,” he said.
 Growth at Fort Meade and the arrival of new contractor offices are expected to create 22,000 new jobs within a five-mile radius of downtown Fort Meade by 2015.
 Anne Arundel which has gained 5,000 jobs a year for the past decade and seen vigorous development in west county, is poised to handle every aspect of that growth, Leib said, except one — traffic. Expansion of MD 175 likely won’t begin until 2011, he said. Improvements on MD 198 will lag three years behind that, and planning for a new exit off MD 32 hasn’t even begun.
 County officials hope to make improvements before the first BRAC personnel arrive in 2011. Officials secured $48 million from the state for intersection improvements around Fort Meade, set aside county money to build Odenton Town Center Boulevard and landed federal funds to alleviate congestion near Fort Meade.
 Those efforts plus the gradual schedule for Fort Meade growth will ensure that traffic issues won’t be as severe as most people think, Leib said.
 “Everybody says this is going to be a tsunami. It’s not. It’s just like the daily tide hitting City Dock. It comes in and every day something is left behind.”

KENT MENSER  >  Howard County
Contact: 410.313.6521, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND: During 27 years in the U.S. Army, Menser served as an aviator, armor officer, professor and commander of three bases, including garrison commander at Fort Meade. After retiring in 1993, he became an advisor to the Croatian defense minister in Zagreb and the Army account executive with SAS, a business intelligence software company.

TACKLING BRAC:  Menser now commands a different kind of volunteer army.
 He’s attracted 170 volunteers to operate the dozen committees that make up Howard County’s BRAC Task Force. He’s given more than 150 public presentations about planned growth in and around Fort Meade and regularly updates more than 1,500 subscribers to his e-mail service.
 “We have total transparency in our operations,” Menser said. “I am very
strong on this because I spent a number of years working with nations coming
out of communism and I understand what lack of transparency means.”
 That openness cuts across county lines.
 Menser and Leib co-chair the Fort Meade Regional Growth Management Committee, a coalition of local governments that’s attempting to implement a
coordinated response to the challenges and opportunities created by Fort Meade’s growth.
 “One of the great things about BRAC and Fort Meade growth is it is bringing us together with a common focus and it is causing us to do more planning together from a regional standpoint,” Menser said. “In the long run, it might come out as one of the big pluses of Fort Meade growth.”

PHIL ALPERSON  >  Montgomery County
Contact: www.montgomerycountymd.gov/brctmpl.asp

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND: Alperson spent 30 years working Capitol Hill for districts ranging from the Catskills to rural New Mexico to a barrio in East Los Angeles. He helped pass the “Keep Our Promise” act, which expanded health care benefits for military retirees.  He was  also an early member of the Capitol Steps political satire group.

TACKLING BRAC: Alperson concedes the plan to combine Walter Reed Army Medical Center and National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda is fraught with challenges.  The rare, urban BRAC project is slated to be built on a site near intersections that are regularly overwhelmed by traffic.
 The development “is going to have 2,500 new [medical] employees parachuting into the middle of this traffic jam. We can’t ask for new roads to be constructed because there is no place to put one,” Alperson said.
 Advocates for the county, however, convinced the state to earmark $45 million for yet-unspecified intersection improvements and convinced federal authorities to consider funding transportation projects. Alperson feels he is in a good position to secure that money.
 “It is not just about Bethesda,” he said. “This is Walter Reed, the first line of care for troops coming home from the war with incredibly devastating injuries. That’s why we feel we are in a position to get Congress to help us.”
 Alperson has a special, personal passion for making that happen.
 “In Congress, I worked a lot on military retiree health care,” he said. “I had no idea I would be in the middle of this Walter Reed situation, so for me, this is like extending the work I did on the Hill. It almost completes it.”

WANDA PLUMER  >  Prince George’s County
Contact: 301.583.4650

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND: An economic development professional of 30 years, Plumer is the county’s director of business development. County employers credit Plumer and her staff with aiding the creation or retention of 2,000 jobs and generating more than $20 million of investment over the past four years.

TACKLING BRAC: Plumer can’t suppress a broad, proud smile when she mentions a data company that’s moving its corporate headquarters from Annapolis to Prince George’s to be closer to the growing operations at Fort Meade and Andrews Air Force Base.
 Plumer applauds local governments’ efforts to coordinate response to militarygrowth. But when it comes to attracting jobs, it’s every county for themselves.
 “I’d love to nab some more of those contractors,” Plumer said. “The possibility of having some contractors locate in the vicinity of  [Andrews] could well be the shot in the arm that neighborhoods around Andrews need to see some redevelopment get off the ground.”
 BRAC and other mission growth are expected to add about 2,800 positions to Andrews.
 Located just three miles from Fort Meade’s fence, Prince George’s County could also accommodate some spillover development from the fort’s growth, she said.
 “For a while, Prince George’s was less developed, but that’s changing,” Plumer said.
 In addition to the 1,300-acre Konterra mixed-used development in Laurel and the Melford office development in Bowie, “developers have buildings planned and approved that could be constructed and ready to go by 2010,” she said.