President Plans to Offer Relief for Base Closings

President Clinton is planning to unveil a new relief package today for workers and communities expected to be hit in this year’s round of military base closings, but the effort is likely to be a modest one, Administration officials said Tuesday.

Administration strategists said that Clinton will release about $80 million in grants for workers and localities that had been approved by Congress in the fiscal 1993 budget but was frozen by the George Bush Administration.

He also will approve the use of $1.35 billion in unspent funds--part of last year’s broader congressional “defense conversion” program--to provide early retirement incentives for military personnel and Defense Department workers and to help subsidize efforts by smaller defense firms to develop products to sell in commercial markets.

Officials said that the Administration will ask Congress for about $1.7 billion in defense conversion funds for fiscal 1994, which begins Oct. 1--the same amount that Congress had appropriated for the current fiscal year, most of which Bush had declined to spend.

Even so, both government and private analysts said that the money is not likely to go very far in helping workers--especially those in the slumping California economy--who may be laid off in the current round of base closings. Analysts said that most such programs have only a marginal impact and that the real solution to creating jobs for displaced workers is to spur the economy.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin is scheduled to begin the base closing process on Friday by unveiling a list of suggested shutdowns that he will send to the independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. That panel has until July 1 to recommend closures.

Defense officials have speculated that the closure list will include at least 30 major military installations, with recommendations that as many as 150 others--mainly depots and smaller sites--be consolidated or cut back.

Officials said that California--where 17 bases have been ordered to be closed since 1988--is expected to be particularly hard-hit once again. Lawmakers already have begun lobbying to ward off some of the expected shutdowns.

Part of the Navy plan proposes the consolidation of naval facilities into two or three “megaports,” possibly at Norfolk, Va., Kings Bay, Ga., or San Diego. The Navy also would close its aviation depot at Pensacola, Fla., and a shipyard in Charleston, S.C.

Aspin, who was on Capitol Hill Tuesday conferring with lawmakers from California and other affected states, has warned that this year’s list will be especially long--”the mother of all base closing lists,” as he put it during a television interview on Sunday.

The bases likely to be affected in California include Alameda Naval Air Station, naval shipyards at Mare Island and Long Beach, El Toro Marine Air Station, March and McClellan Air Force bases, Oakland Navy Supply Center, Treasure Island Naval Station and the Presidio in Monterey.

Members of California’s congressional delegations continued to put pressure on the Administration to go easier on the state, on grounds that California already was hit hard in 1988 and 1991 closures.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in a speech on the Senate floor, urged that the state’s bleak economic conditions be considered before any more bases are closed in the state. She also met with Aspin to plead California’s case.

Feinstein warned that if all the California bases on the list are closed, the move would have a direct effect on 77,000 military and civilian jobs and could have an indirect effect on almost 230,000 more. The state already has an unemployment rate of 9.8%.

During a White House meeting with other Democrats, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) handed Clinton a “personal plea on behalf of the people of California for fair consideration.”

And about 25 members of the state delegation met Tuesday morning at a meeting of a bipartisan task force on defense reinvestment and economic development to map out strategies to fend off the cuts.

House Armed Services Chairman Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) told a visiting group of state legislators that they have a “brief window of opportunity” to lobby the Clinton Administration between now and Thursday night, when Aspin completes his list.

Dellums is urging the Administration to “rethink, revisit and delay” base closures in California.

But Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military installations, said Tuesday that it still is not clear just how hard California might be hit.

On one hand, McCurdy said, the state is particularly vulnerable precisely because it has so many bases. “If you’re going to close bases, you’ve got to go where the bases are.”

At the same time, McCurdy suggested that the Clinton Administration may decide to reduce the damage to California, if only for political reasons.

Clinton is expected to unveil more details of his “defense conversion” program on Thursday, possibly alluding to the base closure issue as well. But officials said that neither effort is likely to be very extensive.

Indeed, although the conversion program is still in the planning stage, strategists said that it will be aimed mainly at encouraging the use of high technology to help expand jobs for highly skilled workers later in the 1990s--not at providing relief for those put out of work now.

Times staff writer James Bornemeier contributed to this story.