8 California Bases on Hit List; Long Beach Shipyard Spared : Military: El Toro Air Station is among those facing shutdown. Aspin also recommends downsizing 18 facilities in state. Tens of thousands of jobs will be eliminated.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin recommended Friday shutting down eight major military installations in California, including the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and reducing the size of 18 other bases in the state, a step that could eliminate tens of thousands of civilian and military jobs over the next three years.

The recommendations were part of a broader Defense Department package that called for closing 23 other large installations across the country, reducing another 11 and shutting down or revamping 105 smaller ones. More than 220,000 jobs nationwide would be affected.

The list now goes to the independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which has until July 1 to make its recommendations and send them to the President and Congress. If neither disapproves them, the panel’s proposals would take effect Sept. 1.

The eight-member commission is scheduled to begin hearings Monday, with Aspin and Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as witnesses. Over the next 14 weeks, the commission also will hold hearings at sites around the country, including California.

Also targeted for closure is the San Diego Naval Training Center.

In a last-minute concession to California’s economic plight and political importance, Aspin spared the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and the Presidio in Monterey, which had been on earlier versions of the list.

And he decided to reduce the size of March Air Force Base in Riverside, rather than close it, as previously indicated.

But the El Toro base in Orange County, which employs about 1,560 civilians and 4,740 military people, remained on Aspin’s list of bases recommended for closure.

Analysts said Friday that the impact on the state economy might be less than feared. Shutting the bases could take years, and, as a result, would have only a limited effect on the state’s recession.

Moreover, the Pentagon said the net job loss for the state would be far less than the base closure figures suggest because the proposal also calls for expanding 21 facilities, including the naval station at San Diego, which is to be the Navy’s major West Coast hub.

The closures would eliminate 61,591 civilian and military jobs over the next three years, but expansions would bring in 25,606 military slots and 4,238 civilian jobs to the state. The net job loss for California would be 16,560 military slots and 15,187 civilian posts.

The concessions to California, apparently made on orders from President Clinton, triggered charges that the new Administration had politicized the base-closing process and raised hopes by some hard-hit states that they may be able to force similar reprieves.

By contrast, President George Bush took a hands-off approach during a similar base-closing effort in 1991. The process was handed over to the base closure commission in 1990 to insulate the process from political favoritism and help ensure that decisions would be based on a facility’s military value.

James A. Courter, the former New Jersey congressman who is chairman of the base closure commission, indicated that the panel was likely to scrutinize Aspin’s recommendations closely and hinted that it might alter the list substantially if it does not find them sound.

In a statement issued after Aspin’s announcement, Courter said that the panel would be sensitive to the economic impact of the shutdowns on localities, but it would make its decisions on whether a base was needed militarily.

Reaction in California was mixed. Gov. Pete Wilson, who has been protesting all week that the base closings would hurt the California economy, praised the last-minute deletions but predicted that the plan would still cost the state $1.5 billion.

“It still is going to impose terrible hardship,” he said.

Neither Clinton nor Aspin was in Washington to comment on the recommendations. They visited the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt just off Norfolk, Va., Friday as part of an effort to bolster their image among military personnel.

But senior Administration officials insisted that the last-minute changes affecting California bases were justified and denied that they were made to ward off a political backlash in the state.

Officials said McClellan Air Force Base was spared because it qualified under a complex formula designed to take into account the cumulative economic impact from previous base closings in an area.

They said an earlier proposal to shut down the Defense Language Institute at the Monterey Presidio drew opposition from U.S. intelligence agencies, which use it heavily. The Pentagon closed Ft. Ord, which had similar facilities, in 1991.

It was not known why the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was not included in Aspin’s recommendations. Some officials insisted that it never was on the list, a claim area lawmakers disputed.

All eight of the large California installations on Aspin’s list were Navy facilities. Officials said the Navy had held back on recommendations during the previous round of base closings in 1991 and sought to make up for it this year.

In addition to the El Toro base and the San Diego Naval Training Center, the targeted bases are Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, the Naval Air Station and the Naval Aviation Depot in Alameda, Oakland Navy Supply Center, the Naval Hospital in Oakland and Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco.

In San Diego, shocked business and political leaders opposed closure of the training center.

“It will be a tremendous loss to the businesses around it and to the city,” Mayor Susan Golding said.

“We want to ensure that the decision (to close the base) was made on a sound factual basis,” Chamber of Commerce President Gilbert Partida said.

Chamber officials said the center, which employs 5,186 military personnel and 402 civilians, contributes about $135 million a year to the local economy.

March Air Force Base in Riverside was the one major California installation recommended for cutbacks rather than closure. The large bomber and refueling aircraft facilities there will be abandoned, and the base will become primarily a reserve installation.

Other regions of the country also were hard hit by the recommendations. Aspin proposed closing Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, despite the hurricane damage in that area, and listed several other facilities in that state.

Aspin said in a statement that the base closings were necessary to keep pace with the steady reduction in the size of the armed forces. He argued that failure to close the facilities would only drain resources and prevent the services from buying equipment.

The Defense Department estimated the cost of shutting down the facilities at $1.7 billion between now and fiscal 1996. But Defense officials predicted that the moves would save $5.7 billion during the three following years and $3.1 billion a year after that.

Aspin said the base closings plan was based on the 1.6-million member “base force” proposed by Bush for fiscal 1995. He acknowledged that with Clinton planning to cut that to 1.4 million, more base closings are almost inevitable.

The Pentagon also announced that it was closing or cutting back another 29 U.S. bases overseas, including 14 in Germany, eight in Greece, four in Holland, two in Britain and one in Okinawa.

Criticism of the decision on California bases was rampant in Washington. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he was “deeply disturbed by the politicization of the process.”

“Apparently for electoral reasons, the Clinton Administration has decided to abandon objectivity in its own studies, analyses and recommendations,” McCain said. “The Administration owes us an explanation,” he told The Times.

Times staff wriers Cathleen Decker, Melissa Healey and H.G. Reza contributed to this article.