Tactics to Fight Base Closures Sharpened : Defense: Regional commission hearings are in Oakland and San Diego next week. It is a high-stakes encounter taking place amid a gloomy atmosphere.

Say the words base closing and California shudders. The empire of military bases, shipyards, supply depots and hospitals that helped fuel the state’s economic boom in the 1970s and ‘80s is again under attack. A persistent wailing has been heard across the political spectrum, from U.S. senator to mayor, since Defense Secretary Les Aspin released his list of doomed facilities in mid-March.

Dire prophecies flowed from the mouths of elected officials. Chamber of commerce presidents described how delicate webs of economic interdependence will be destroyed by the sledgehammer blows of an indebted federal government seeking to save a few billion dollars here, a few billion there.

The stakes are huge and reactions are visceral.

In Orange County, three out of five residents oppose the closure of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and more than 70% believe that the local economy will suffer if the base is shut down, according to a recent Times poll.

But, behind the torrent of rhetoric lies a sobering reality. Military budgets and troop strength are dropping faster than bases are closing. And those bases that do survive will face another grueling round of base-closing deliberations in 1995.

So California, with its hoard of military booty, is in line to take a dreadful pounding. Seventeen major bases have been lost in two previous rounds of base closings. Ten are under the gun and no one expects any miracles.

Into this gloomy atmosphere comes the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, poised to hold three regional hearings starting Sunday, two in Oakland and one in San Diego.

Along with visits to each site slated for closure, the regional hearings let commissioners gauge the human dimension of their decisions and allow state and local officials to strafe the panel with oral and written testimony to rebut the Pentagon arguments.

Targeted communities are making elaborate preparations for this somber bit of governmental theater. Politicians are huddling, witness lists are being culled and copiers are churning out mountains of forensic data.

But how best to ward off the closings?

The cry of “cumulative economic impact,” as articulated by Gov. Pete Wilson and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, plays well in the public arena. Although the commission must consider four economic criteria, those are secondary to four that deal strictly with military value.

To many familiar with the base-closing process, the way to sway the commission is with a solid rationale for keeping a base alive, not a mournful depiction of a traumatized host community when a base dies.

“No question, the commission likes a strong military-strategic argument,” said Tim Terry, legislative assistant to Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), who is fighting to save McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento. “The economic distress (of closing down) is not really what distinguishes one base from another. That sort of pain applies everywhere.”

It will be up to the threatened communities to analyze the Pentagon’s justifications, find inconsistencies and errors and make the most of them. The Byzantine rating system used by Defense Department planners provides a wealth of opportunities.

Previous experience with the base-closing routine has made the communities more sophisticated in their efforts to poke holes in the Pentagon’s recommendations. But the differences between the surviving bases has narrowed.

“Most of the really bad bases were gotten rid of in the earlier rounds, and a fairly good argument can be made for any (existing) base,” Terry said.

For example, the Air Force wants to close McClellan Air Force Base, one of five nationwide that maintains and repairs aircraft. The problem: excess maintenance capacity. So the approach to rebut that is twofold, Terry said.

“If you really want to cut excess capacity, we will argue that the commission should look across service lines and look at all (the other services’) assets equally. The Air Force has two or three times the investment in maintenance facilities than the Navy,” Terry said.

“Then we’ll point out how McClellan stacks up against the four other air logistics centers in other states. We think their argument has a lot of holes, and Air Force acknowledges a high degree of subjectivity in its recommendation,” he said.

The Pentagon used elaborate comparison models to rate the facilities, but some conclusions have been criticized as “result-based” and designed to shield ulterior motives.

Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Berkeley), Aspin’s successor as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is faced with the prospect of four naval facilities in his district being shut down. Alameda Naval Air Station is the biggest.

“I’m not crying foul,” Dellums said last month. “I’m crying fraud.”

Dellums suspects that closing the naval air station is the first step in a plan to build new facilities at the naval station at Everett, Wash. “I know this is a shell game and we need to smoke it out,” he said.

The commissioners will be reminded that the Bay Area bases can berth nuclear carriers and that moving them would be expensive and involve a ticklish nuclear permit process.

Other arguments that should be common to many communities will be massive relocation and environmental cleanup costs.

At the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, base commanders are reviewing the Pentagon’s estimates of the cost of moving their Marines to the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. Maj. Gen. P. Drax Williams, the El Toro commander, said in a recent interview that the costs may be too great to justify the move.

South Orange County residents opposed to the closure are adopting the argument that the proposed relocation to Miramar was not well planned. While Miramar sits on a much larger parcel of land, an extra 10 million square feet of facility space would have to be built just to match the space currently used at El Toro.

In San Diego, any economic argument will probably have to be soft-pedaled. Despite the targeting of the naval recruit training center, San Diego stands to gain nearly 8,000 jobs because of proposed transfers from other commands.

Instead, arguments will focus on how San Diego stacks up against the two other training centers in Orlando, Fla., and Great Lakes, Ill. One central point the commissioners will hear is San Diego’s “fleet interaction,” a military term for the opportunity for recruits to train on real ships and a real ocean.

Congressmen in districts facing base closures generally take the lead in orchestrating the argument, selecting the witnesses and divvying up hearing time. The exception may be in Orange County, where most members of the GOP congressional delegation have decided not to fight the closing.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), whose district includes the El Toro base, has not taken a final position on the closing. Instead, he has focused on trying to determine the true cost of moving the troops to Miramar.

His role during the San Diego hearing will be to introduce Orange County speakers--most from communities opposed to the base closure, as well as the mayor of Newport Beach, whose city favors converting the base into a commercial airport.

Senators and House members generally restrict their testimony to introductory remarks to allow more time for local officials. Major bases will be allotted 60 to 90 minutes of testimony; smaller ones will have five to 30 minutes.

Several witnesses will typically make pleas on behalf of the besieged base.

Although the lineup may change, Wilson is slated to be the leadoff witness at the first Oakland hearing, to start at noon Sunday. On Tuesday, the hearings will move to San Diego.

Set up in 1990, the base closing process allows Congress to insulate itself from the highly unpopular decisions. Once the commission’s recommendations go to President Clinton on July 1, he ships it over to Congress, which can only approve or disapprove in its entirety--no messy home-grown amendments allowed.

But that does not mean the process is free of politics.

The Air Force wanted McClellan closed, but Aspin dropped it off his list at the last minute after vigorous entreaties from Wilson, Feinstein, Boxer and a host of other California officials, who said the Sacramento region had suffered enough. Theories about Clinton Administration fingerprints on the maneuver brought White House denials.

The commission, led by Chairman James Courter, put it back to avoid the appearance that political persuasion had tainted the process.

Later, Courter showed up with Republican Wilson at a Washington news conference and suggested that four other air logistics centers in other states might be added to the list--good news to McClellan backers who would then presumably be able to ferret out favorable comparisons.