Governor Joins Fight to Retain AF Base

After maintaining a low profile on the issue for months, Gov. George Deukmejian has joined the drive to keep the 3,200-employee Air Force Space Systems Division in El Segundo, officials close to the governor say.

The officials say the state is now studying how it can help ease a shortage of low-cost housing for local Air Force personnel, a key problem underlying the service’s tentative plan to move its space unit from the Los Angeles area.

Meanwhile, a local business leader says Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has agreed to consider turning city land over to the Air Force for low-cost housing as part of an effort to head off the proposed move.

Sam Iacobellis, a Rockwell International executive who chairs an aerospace panel for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said the mayor gave him the assurance Aug. 14.

A spokesman for the mayor said he could not confirm that such a proposal is in the works, but he added that Bradley’s office has begun studying how to help keep the space division in El Segundo.

The Air Force has discussed moving the base elsewhere in California, as well as to Colorado or New Mexico.

Deukmejian and Bradley’s involvement comes as a boost to a bipartisan lobbying effort against a transfer of the Space Systems Division, which oversees research, planning and procurement of military space hardware.

If the move occurs, it would probably also involve the transfer of the 4,000-employee Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit think tank in El Segundo that works closely with the space division. Losing the two units would be a major blow to the Los Angeles area’s struggling aerospace industry, chamber and local officials say.

“Aside from the immediate impact of over 7,000 lost jobs, the indirect costs in jobs and lost revenue for the aerospace sector are staggering,” U.S. Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), said at a press conference Tuesday in El Segundo.

The Air Force announced in January that it might close Los Angeles Air Force Base--the site of the space system division--and transfer the space unit elsewhere as part of a drive to cut defense spending.

For months, the governor took a hands-off approach to avoid favoring El Segundo over the other in-state sites that the Air Force is considering as alternatives--March AFB near Riverside and Vandenberg AFB near Lompoc.

But proponents of two out-of-state sites in contention--Colorado Springs, Colo., and Albuquerque, N.M.--are waging aggressive lobbying campaigns for the division. And they enjoy strong backing from their respective governors--Garrey Carruthers of New Mexico and Roy Romer of Colorado.

Kenneth Gibson, director of the state Department of Commerce, says the governor will try to keep the space division in California if the Air Force decides that a transfer has to take place. Deukmejian’s next choice for the base would be March AFB, he said.

But the assurance does not satisfy the Inland Empire Space Systems Division Relocation Group, a business coalition pushing hard for the March AFB site.

Stephen Albright, the group’s chairman, says he fears that California will lose the space division if the state wastes time and money trying to keep the unit in a place that has proved unsatisfactory to the Air Force.

“There are reasons why businesses are leaving the (Los Angeles) area, and it is cost-related,” Albright said. “We can’t just gloss these problems over.”