2 Big Southland Navy Bases Step Closer to Closure

Thirteen U.S. military bases, including two major naval facilities in Southern California, came a step closer Friday to being shut down after an independent commission voted to keep them on a list of candidates to be closed.

In the wake of the vote, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and the San Diego Naval Training Center will be considered for closure on a par with 43 bases that the Pentagon had targeted in April. The facilities that the Defense Base Closures and Realignment Commission voted Friday to study further were not on the Pentagon list but were on a list of 36 “additional options” announced by the commission last week.

After Friday’s action, another nine military facilities, including the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot, face possible realignment--in which they would be downsized or used differently--rather than being closed.

The commission is culling military installations from its original list of 36.

The decisions are tentative, meaning that those bases remaining on the list are a step closer to being among the installations that may be shut down to cut costs. The commission’s final recommendations, due July 1, are subject to all-or-nothing approval by Congress.

Friday’s vote followed two days of public discussion by the seven-member panel on the characteristics of individual bases and the criteria it will use in deciding which installations to recommend closing. In 17 earlier hearings, the commission has listened to Pentagon officials defend their recommendations and lawmakers and community officials plead for a reprieve for their bases.

“I told everybody on Day 1 that this commission would be fiercely independent--that we would examine every shred of evidence,” committee Chairman Jim Courter said. “Ultimately, our exhaustive analysis will be leavened with sound judgment. Not everyone will approve of our recommendations, but I am convinced that all parties are being fairly treated.”

The commission granted reprieves Friday to eight major facilities that it earlier had proposed to consider closing. Army training sites at Ft. Richardson, Ark., and Ft. Drum, N.Y., and Navy home ports in Mississippi, Alabama, Washington and Texas were spared from further consideration.

Commission members voted also to continue considering the realignment--or partial closing--of the Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco Bay, as well as communications and electronics repair facilities in Barstow and San Diego.

In voting to keep the Long Beach Naval Shipyard on their list, the commissioners argued that, with fewer ships being built, repaired and overhauled in the United States, the nation has more shipyards than it needs. They cited a long-standing criticism of Long Beach--that it is not equipped and approved to work on the Navy’s nuclear-powered ships.

In Long Beach, officials reacted angrily to the news that it could lose one of its solid economic anchors.

The shipyard, the city’s second-largest employer, provides about 4,100 jobs and pumps about $300 million annually in the local economy. Officials have called it the most profitable shipyard in the country.

“This makes no sense,” Mayor Ernie Kell said. “Last year, (the shipyard) returned about $56 million to the U.S. Treasury . . . . This was very bad news.”

Louis Rodriguez, a shipyard union leader, said: “It’s shocking. We can’t believe the type of criteria they’re using in Washington.” Rodriguez, president of the local International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, noted that the shipyard recently won a merit award from the government.

The commission left open whether to recommend closing or realigning the San Diego Naval Training Center at Point Loma, where last year 28% of the Navy’s enlistees--almost 21,000 men and women--underwent eight weeks of boot camp.

The San Diego facility is one of three naval training bases nationwide and was ranked third by the Navy in the over-all quality of its facilities, the commission reported. A smaller pool of Navy recruits means that one of the three is likely to be closed. And, although the commission earlier had planned to consider closing the Navy’s Great Lakes Training Center in Illinois, it voted Friday to exempt that installation from further consideration. The Pentagon has proposed that the Naval Training Center in Orlando, Fla., be shut.

Most of the San Diego recruit training facility’s 279 buildings were described as “inadequate and not up-to-date” by the commission’s staff. It added that the 546 acres of land at the base could not be significantly expanded to accommodate a surge of recruits during a crisis.

If the training center is closed, it could be a major blow to the area. With 168 civilian employees and almost 9,300 military students and staff, the base generates payrolls of almost $70 million annually, Chief Petty Officer Paul Versailles, a base spokesman, said.

Staff writer Roxana Kopetman in Long Beach contributed to this story.