The Review:
WASHINGTON — A military base roughly 30 miles from the now-shuttered GM plant at Lordstown may encapsulate the region’s hope for something — anything — to help replace the thousands of jobs lost when GM left the region.
Regional leaders want that site — Camp James A. Garfield Joint Military Training Center near Ravenna — to be the home of America’s next missile defense site, the only one on the eastern half of the continental U.S.
But the wait has been long and tedious. Ohio lawmakers had thought last year a decision was imminent and would be announced as part of the long-awaited Ballistic Missile Defense Review. But when the review came out in January, there was hardly a mention of the East Coast site.
Now officials hope that language in an earlier defense bill requiring the Defense Department to designate a preferred site within 60 days of publishing the Ballistic Missile Defense Review means an announcement is imminent.
