Clinton Vows ‘Special’ Attention’ to State Bases : Defense: He believes the commission may conclude that closing all five Bay Area facilities would hit California’s economy too hard.

Saying that the proposed closing of eight California military bases was “very painful” to him, President Clinton on Saturday promised “special attention” to the state--and especially the San Francisco Bay area--in his defense conversion program.

Clinton, speaking a day after Defense Secretary Les Aspin proposed 31 major base closings nationwide, said the commission evaluating Aspin’s proposals “should consider the strongest possible arguments” against the shutdown of five major bases in the Bay Area.

And he said he believes that the commission may indeed conclude that closing all five would hit California’s economy too hard. “I think that’s going to be a pretty hard sell,” he said.

The President said the Navy had suffered relatively few cutbacks in the first two rounds of closings, and he said the Navy itself “strongly recommended” the sites on the new list.

The comments came during White House back-to-back interviews with reporters from California, Florida and Connecticut and were aimed at reassuring those areas about the effects of the base closings and other problems. His reassurances to California were a bow to the special political importance of a state that, Clinton acknowledged, was the key to his electoral victory.

Aspin’s recommendations call for closing eight California installations and cutting back operations at 18 others, and would eliminate tens of thousands of civilian and military jobs in the state over the next three years. The independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission has until July 1 to send its decision to the President and Congress; if Clinton and the lawmakers take no action, the commission’s recommendations will begin to take effect Sept. 1.

In his regular Saturday radio address, Clinton also sought to reassure communities targeted by the base closing proposals, saying that Aspin’s recommendations were not final and pointing out that the shutdowns would not take effect for three to five years, in any case.

“We’ll make sure every community affected by a base closing will have the help they need right away to plan for new businesses and new jobs,” the President said.

Clinton sought to finesse the delicate question of whether he had intervened to save two other California facilities, the Monterey Presidio and McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, after lobbying by California elected officials. Reports of lobbying by California’s two U.S. senators, Gov. Pete Wilson and some House delegation members have brought complaints that Clinton was contaminating a nonpartisan process with politics.

Clinton insisted that he had not seen the list or given Aspin any directions, except to remind him to “fulfill his legal responsibilities” by weighing the overall economic impact of the closings. California officials have argued that the list was unfair to a state already burdened with a 9.8% unemployment rate and other symptoms of economic distress.

At the same time, Clinton took pains to see that the politicians who had taken credit for the last-minute changes were not embarrassed. “I do think you ought to give credit to those people who made that intense plea,” he said. Through their calls to Aspin, “they may have had some impact on this; I’m sure they did.”

Clinton pointed to his defense conversion program and the Administration’s proposed $16-billion economic stimulus program as evidence of his commitment to help the California economy.

He said that during the next three years he intended to make an “intense effort” through the $20-billion, five-year conversion program to help companies move into non-defense work. As part of the same program, he would also use money to retrain defense workers who might lose their jobs--and to help communities losing defense jobs to develop new economic strategies.

“I think there’s tremendous opportunity in California if we can do all these things to redevelop the high-wage jobs base,” he said.

Clinton offered no estimate of how much special help the state might receive under the program. Leon E. Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a former California congressman, noted that California would get at least $2 billion over five years, if the allocation is proportional to the state’s population.

California has 12% of the nation’s population, but 21% of its defense jobs.

Clinton noted that his stimulus package would bring government spending later this year on summer jobs and highway and clean-water projects. “Right now, what I’m trying to do is get a big infusion of capital into California through this stimulus program,” he said.

He said the Administration has worked out final details that will allow it to make good on an earlier promise to boost California’s fiscal 1993 immigration-related aid to $900 million, from $600 million. The money will go to cover the state’s costs in training and settling immigrants and to covering the cost of their health care. Some of the money will go for immigration law-enforcement expenses.

Along with such states as Texas, Florida and New York, California has been “unfairly financially burdened” because the federal government has not paid more of the expenses related to illegal immigration, the President said.

Clinton argued that the state could actually benefit from the shutdown of unneeded bases. Closing them would free defense dollars to be spent on building advanced weaponry--and probably bring more work to California defense contractors.

In the end, Clinton said, “California is going to be better off if the government pushes ahead with converting to a post-Cold War economy.”

Clinton sought to defuse problems with Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley), who has called the proposed closing of five bases in his district politically motivated. Dellums had suggested his district was targeted by the military because he had been in favor of military cutbacks. Aspin has said such decisions were made only for military reasons.

Clinton said the proposals had been painful for him to witness in part because they had fallen heavily on constituents of Dellums, who is the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

“His district has the biggest projected loss,” Clinton said, calling Dellums “a man I very much admire.”

Clinton also told reporters from Florida that the federal government plans to speed up aid for parts of South Florida hit last August by Hurricane Andrew. The aid will include $76 million to be used to rebuild Homestead Air Force Base in south Dade County for dual civilian and military use, even though Homestead is among the bases targeted for shutdown.