President Bush signed off this month on closure recommendations sent to him by the BRAC Commission, a nine-member panel charged with reviewing the Pentagon's list.
Congress has 45 working days to reject or accept the recommendations in their entirety.
Lowcountry bases were spared from this year's list, but it doesn't take a BRAC round to close a base, and a constant advocacy of base issues and their surrounding communities needs to remain in South Carolina, retired Marine
Col. John Payne, chairman of the local Military Enhancement Committee, said last week.
"We would be exceptionally naive to think that it takes a BRAC to eliminate an installation," he said. "I hope that we could cooperate as communities across the state."
The local committee, an offshoot of the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce that was established to deal with this BRAC round, is considering holding onto the donations it has received in the past few years to fight the 2005 BRAC, Payne said.
Committee members would not release their latest budget numbers last week, but fundraising reports from earlier this year portray a budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Payne said that while some donations came from local residents and businesses, most of the money has come from state and local government.
As of April's fundraising report, local and state government had donated about $507,000 of the committee's $604,000 budget.
Much of the money has so far been spent on professional consultants who have eyes and ears in Washington, D.C.
"It really depends on whether or not we need it," Payne said of returning the donations. "If the state puts together something and will help us and have ongoing funds for all the towns in the state that have bases, we might return some of the funds."
State Rep. Catherine Ceips, R-Beaufort, said last week that she plans to introduce a bill in next year's legislative session that will provide for such an overarching state commission.
The commission would provide funds to the state's military communities to deal with encroachment and other issues, helping to continue to frame South Carolina as a good place for the Defense Department to do business, she said.
"We need an ongoing effort for our military families," Ceips said. "I'm surprised we haven't done such a thing."
Ceips introduced legislation last year calling for such a commission, but it was vetoed by Gov. Mark Sanford in December.
A Sanford spokesman said at the time that the commission would have duplicated the efforts of the South Carolina Military Base Task Force, which the governor created in 2003.
Ceips said the new legislation would include bonding money to fund the statewide commission's work.
Last week, Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said the governor supports keeping the state's task force in place as this BRAC round ends.
Local entities such as Beaufort's Military Enhancement Committee should also keep going, Sawyer said.
"What we had in place worked very well this time, and our bias would be to keep a similar track going forward," he said.