Congressman says Depot safe from closure

Alabama third district congressman Mike Rogers, of Saks, says he is confident the Anniston Army Depot is safe from any future federal shuttering of defense installations to save money, known as Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC.

Rogers said Congress wouldn’t take up any such shutdowns before President Barack Obama leaves office. Even if it did, he said, other military installations are more likely to be closed than Anniston’s depot.

The depot, charged with repairing the U.S. Army’s heavy and light tracked vehicles, employs roughly 2,900. Another 1,050 work for the installation’s tenant organizations and contractors.

When Congress does consider another round of BRAC — Rogers believes that will happen within four years — Anniston Army Depot is too essential to be closed.

Rogers,  chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services’ Strategic Forces subcommittee blamed a decrease in the workload at the depot on both an end to more than a decade of American troops fighting in the Middle East and to previous government spending cuts, known as sequestration.