Legislation would rein in runaway BRAC costs New Jersey's U.S. senators, Democrats Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, are keenly aware of some of the wildly inaccurate cost estimates used in the BRAC process, since the closing of Fort Monmouth is now expected to cost almost twice its original $780 million price tag. They have introduced legislation that would trigger a reconsideration of major base closings that will cost far more than what was estimated during the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. "The point of this process was to reduce costs, but now the price tag for some of these base closings is ballooning out of control and taxpayers are the ones carrying the burden," Menendez said in a press release dated July 31. "If taxpayers are being forced to foot an enormous bill they weren't expecting, there should be an escape hatch. In New Jersey, we have communities and families that will be greatly impacted by the closing of Fort Monmouth. Knowing that the decision was based on miscalculations and misinformation does not sit well with our state, and it should not sit well with taxpayers across the country either." Lautenberg added: "This bill would require real accountability and transparency in the base closure process. It would ensure that excessive cost overruns in closing a base like Fort Monmouth never happen again. It would also provide a method to review the closure of Fort Monmouth so that we can re-evaluate the decision to close the base that was based upon faulty information. "I look forward to working to get this legislation enacted into law," Lautenberg said. They explained that the point of the BRAC process is to reduce costs. But the cost of BRAC has ballooned out of control - from the BRAC Commission's original, one-time implementation cost estimate of $21 billion to a current price tag of $30 billion - a 43 percent increase. According to the senators, the Menendez legislation simply tries to control these excessive costs and ensure that BRAC is maximizing taxpayers' money. The legislation works from a basic principle, already in existing law, that the move requires another look if the costs have increased by more than 25 percent.