Norton AFB in Middle of Bidding War : Employment: San Bernardino is offering the doomed Air Force base as a site for a Defense Department finance center. About 4,000 federal jobs are at stake.
The scent of 4,000 new federal jobs has intoxicated San Bernardino.
Battered by aerospace and defense cutbacks, the city is locked in an extraordinary competition for one of several Defense Department regional finance centers that promise to be potent economic elixirs to the lucky communities that win a nationwide bidding war.
Backed by money and support from county, regional and state government, the city is offering the Defense Department $108 million in incentives to bring the big federal payroll and its millions of dollars in spinoff benefits to the struggling Inland Empire.
In an ironic twist, the city is offering to locate the center at Norton Air Force Base. Four years ago the Pentagon shocked the region by announcing that the base would be closed in 1994, cutting 10,000 jobs out of the local economy.
Even the state’s powerful congressional delegation is making an impressive, if uncharacteristic, show of unanimity over the San Bernardino location, firing off letters to President Clinton and Defense Secretary Les Aspin, meeting with Defense Department officials and delivering the grim economic statistics about California and the Inland Empire to whoever will listen.
It helps that Norton is the only California site left in the running for one of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service outposts. The other locations range from Bangor, Me., to Denver, with Ohio and Oklahoma each placing three cities on the list of 20 finalists. The San Bernardino site is the only finalist west of the Rockies.
The Defense Department has decided to consolidate most of its finance and accounting activities--now being performed in hundreds of locations employing fewer than 100 people--into as few as three and as many as seven sites.
The stakes are so high that the prospect of being selected is producing lottery-like anxiety.
“We have an excellent proposal,” said San Bernardino Mayor W. R. (Bob) Holcomb. “It’s cost-effective for the government, good for the region and good for the country. But I always run scared when anything has the potential of getting caught up in politics. If the decision is based on merit, we’ve got a very strong chance of winning.”
The Defense Department will reveal the sites as part of a broader announcement, scheduled for mid-March, about a new round of military base closures. The independent Base Closure and Realignment Commission will review the recommendations and present a final list for Congress and Clinton to approve or reject by October.
Making the cut in March is crucial.
“At this moment (the center) is as important an economic proposal as the region has available for the rest of the decade,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), whose newly configured district encompasses the Air Force base.
The manic pursuit of the finance centers was set in motion last March when the Defense Department chose, in an unprecedented move, to take bids as a cost-saving measure. Other federal agencies have experimented with such bidding procedures, officials said, but this was the first time the Defense Department used the technique.
In effect, the government was saying: “We have 4,000 jobs. Make us your best offer.”
More than 200 applications from 33 states poured in as officials calculated the long-term benefits of thousands of federal clerical jobs.
Late last year the list was narrowed to the 20 finalists, eliminating half a dozen other California communities chasing the federal payroll.
Some congressional critics saw the decision to accept bids on the centers as wrongheaded, fearing that economically stronger communities would have an advantage over ones harder hit by the recession by being able to offer more tantalizing inducements.
Legislators, who also worried that the sites would be decided on purely narrow economic grounds, were able to insert legislative language urging the secretary of defense “to take account of a broader set of considerations than simply the relative economics of proposals.”
California politicians hope to exploit that wrinkle.
“This allows Aspin to use some judgment in the decision,” said Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), whose district included the Norton base for years. “Bill Clinton just visited the state, saying California needed help. I can’t think of anything that would be a bigger help.”
While no one is promising a San Bernardino victory, there are strong feelings that the importance of California’s economic health to Clinton’s political fortunes will play a part.
“I believe that ultimately the decision will be made at the very highest level,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has lobbied Clinton on the issue, organized supportive letters and recently toured Norton Air Force Base.
On Thursday, Lewis and Brown sent another letter to Aspin, reminding him that it was during his chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee that the special language was drafted.
The letter, signed by all members of the California delegation, urges Aspin to give more weight to the Inland Empire’s unemployment rate, which, at 12.5%, is the highest of the 20 finalists.
Under Defense Finance and Accounting Service guidelines, the letter suggests, unemployment is being used only as an impersonal gauge of “availability” of the labor force. The Californians want to make sure that Aspin sees the statistic as part of a regional “misery index” largely brought on by defense cutbacks.
“The local unemployment rate coupled with the dislocation caused by defense downsizing seem to us to be appropriate factors to take into account,” the letter stated.
Despite its sputtering regional economy, San Bernardino, a city of about 175,000, has pulled together an impressive package of incentives.
The first offer in May totaled about $35 million, said William Bopf, executive director of the Inland Valley Development Agency, which has joined the city as the prime applicant for the finance center. On Feb. 16, the package swelled to $108 million after other agencies joined the proposal. The package includes:
* $25 million from the development agency to buy and refurbish a building on a three-acre site at Norton.
* $3 million from the agency for furniture.
* $3 million from San Bernardino County for a communications system.
* $1.1 million from the city to purchase a child-care operation at the base.
* $15 million from San Bernardino Assn. of Governments to widen roads and improve access to the base.
* $10 million from the state for job training.
* $1.5 million from the state for new heating and cooling systems.
* $50 million in lease subsidies over 30 years.
“It’s a very solid, competitive offer,” Bopf said. “I’d say we’re mid-range on facilities and very good on the financial package. We weren’t trying to make a palace out of it.”
If the San Bernardino offer makes it through the selection process, the redevelopment agency would be committing three of four redevelopment dollars it takes in to support the finance center, Bopf said. “In the 30th year, we would be paying $4 million a year for a $800-million payroll,” he said. “That’s a pretty good bargain.”
The 4,000 jobs would include accountants, account technicians and payroll clerks, as well as systems, administrative, support and public affairs personnel. The average annual salary with benefits would be $35,000, according to accounting service officials. The overwhelming majority would be white-collar jobs, they said.
Although many civilian workers employed at Norton would qualify for the finance center jobs, accounting service officials could not estimate how many would be hired. But they estimate that 85% of the jobs would come from the local labor pool because the agency does not offer relocation incentives for its workers nationwide.
The centers pay all military personnel, civilian employees and defense contractors, as well as keeping track of travel expenses, foreign military sales and debt collection.
The congressional lobbying will continue as the selection process reaches its final stage. But to Brown, there is already a big winner.
“(The agency) will come out of this like gangbusters,” Brown said. “They have people all over the country fighting over them. This will be very good for the Defense Department.”
