Legislators Say O.C. Congressmen Surrendered Too Soon : Politics: County’s Sacramento delegation assails federal counterparts’ lack of protest at planned El Toro closure. They ‘were missing in action,’ fumes Umberg.

Irked by the placid reaction of Orange County congressmen to plans to close the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, the county’s delegation to the state Legislature voiced outrage Wednesday over White House efforts to shutter the area’s largest military base.

But even the most gung-ho among the Sacramento contingent conceded that their efforts could go for naught, in part because Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) has declared that he won’t fight the planned shutdown of El Toro.

“Our congressional delegation was missing in action on this one,” said Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), an Army Reserve officer who would like to see the base remain open. “The squeakiest wheel gets the grease, and since this wheel isn’t squeaking, I suspect that El Toro will be eliminated.”

Dornan and Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), whose district includes the El Toro base, met with Pentagon officials this week to discuss the base closure. Cox, who has not taken a strong stand on the base closure, did not return a phone call from The Times. Dornan, however, said Wednesday that he has decided to give up any fight.

“I would love to keep the base open, but I had no logical responses” to counter the rationale cited by military officials during a meeting Tuesday that lasted nearly two hours, said Dornan, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Dornan said Marine Corps officers told him that the Orange County base “emerged from the pack early on” as the best candidate for closure because of its age, noise complaints from neighbors, lack of room for expansion, its small size compared to other military facilities and the potential danger of a jet crashing into the busy San Diego or Santa Ana freeways.

Although the closure would cause economic pain for Orange County, Dornan said, the region has the best prospect of any now being targeted to recover quickly and prosper after the installation is shut down.

He said the base, which lies beside a major industrial park and the two freeways, would be an ideal candidate for a commercial airport and office complexes. Ultimately, he said, “it could generate great tax revenue for the county.”

Such arguments did little to quell the ire of Orange County’s legislative delegation in Sacramento, which includes a number of retired military officers.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), a former Marine Corps officer once stationed at El Toro, said he is “outraged” over the proposal to shut down El Toro. The move would make “no strategic sense at all” because the base provides a ready launch platform for quick response air attacks to far-flung regions of the globe, he said.

With the exception of Dornan, the county’s congressmen lack the military experience “to appreciate” the strategic importance of the base, he said.

Ferguson also said he suspects that partisan politics played a big role in the White House decision to include El Toro on the base closure list, noting that Orange County was one of the few locales in California that President Clinton failed to carry in the November election.

In addition, he said the “real agenda” behind the lax congressional response may be the desire of some Orange County residents to see the base converted to use for industrial parks or as a public airfield to relieve pressure on Newport Beach’s busy John Wayne Airport.

Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), whose district includes a swath of South County near the base, said he hopes to pull together a coalition of local, state and federal leaders to make a last ditch effort to save the base.

“I’m outraged,” said Morrow, also a former Marine officer. “The way I see it, this is little more than a military shell game. And I’ve got to tell you, I disagree with any member of our congressional delegation who supports the base closure. If they’ve had concerns this base is some pork barrel, they should have made their feelings known in the previous 50 years.”

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) said he would work to see the base remain open out of concern that it will cause housing problems for young Marine families.

Pentagon plans call for the 3,200 Marines at El Toro to relocate at the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. But while there are more than 2,700 base housing units at El Toro, Miramar has only 347 units.

Conroy, a former Marine Corps pilot long active in veterans issues, said he plans to “stand and fight” for the base during upcoming hearings. If necessary, he will seek a guarantee that housing will be constructed at Miramar before the Marines are moved south.

Umberg, meanwhile, said he also will lobby officials in Washington in an effort to thwart the closure.

Although boosters of base closure suggest that the air station could sprout buildings and airport terminals soon after the Marines moved on, Umberg said the cleanup of toxic contamination on the base could take years, delaying private enterprise efforts and putting a dent in the county economy.

Regulators have identified 22 areas on the base where they suspect dangerous toxic substances have tainted the soil, said Umberg, chairman of the Assembly’s toxic material committee. “If there’s significant ground-water contamination, it might take as long as 20 years to clean up some of it,” he warned.