State Officials Urge Panelists to Save Bases : Military: Gov. Wilson, Sen. Feinstein tell commission the closure plan is economically unfair and strategically unwise. Members appear impressed with California presentation.

Hammering away at the dire consequences for California, Gov. Pete Wilson and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the Defense Base Closing and Realignment Commission on Sunday that the planned shutdowns of 10 major military facilities statewide is economically unfair and strategically unwise.

The commission, in the first of three hearings in the state on closures, seemed impressed by the well-orchestrated California presentation, spanning four hours and nearly 20 witnesses.

Much of the testimony was aimed at knocking down the complicated methodology that the Pentagon used to arrive at its recommendations.

But Wilson and Feinstein seemed to score points by dramatizing the serious economic effects on California of earlier rounds of base closings over three years.

Using separate pie charts and bar graphs, first Wilson and then Feinstein drove home repeatedly the warning that proposed job cuts would hit California disproportionately hard.

“California has less than 15% of the total domestic military and civilian Defense Department personnel,” Feinstein said. “Yet we have endured over 50% of all personnel reductions as a result of base closures since 1988.”

“That is quite staggering,” said Commissioner Harry C. McPherson Jr. “I didn’t know that, and if that’s true, that would seem out of line.”

Afterward, Wilson said that he was “optimistic that they are learning things that are going to cause them to take a very different view.”

But by law, the commission must place more importance on military value than on economic impact, and most testimony focused on flaws or miscalculations in the Pentagon reasoning.

Wilson argued that California bases are needed to protect American security interests with Pacific Rim trading partners, and noted that some regimes, such as North Korea’s, posed unsettling military problems.

Feinstein attacked the Navy’s decision to close Alameda Naval Air Station while leaving unscathed a facility in Everett, Wash., that is far less equipped.

She called for a “dedicated ‘side-by-side’ analysis” of all naval facilities to gauge their cost-effectiveness. “The military values of Everett and Alameda were calculated using different criteria,” Feinstein said. If the two bases are compared with the same criteria, “Alameda would have scored decisively higher.”

The bulk of Sunday’s testimony was devoted to McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento.

Led by Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), a panel of local officials pointed out what they see as many apparent errors in the Pentagon analysis of the base’s strengths and weaknesses.

McClellan, one of five aircraft maintenance centers nationwide, scored poorly in base-by-base comparisons, but Tom Eres of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce questioned the accuracy of the data and rebutted nearly two dozen conclusions.

On such criteria as time lost from absenteeism, proximity of bombing ranges, spousal employment and public transportation--all of which are among the factors on which bases were judged--Eres was able to show flawed or confusing rationales for closing McClellan.

“We have found flawed information to be a common complaint,” said Commissioner Robert D. Stuart Jr. in praising Eres’ analysis.

Communities nationwide are being forced to seize upon analytical errors to attack the decisions to close bases in their areas.

Fazio urged that commissioners spare McClellan in this round, and seek a broad study of every repair and maintenance facility across all branches of service, and not rely on “this very imprecise data.”

Like the other four air logistics centers around the country, McClellan faces daunting environmental cleanup costs, estimated to be as high as $10 billion. Environmental cleanup costs are not factored into the Pentagon’s base closure estimates.

But closing down the base would force a more rapid cleanup, which would inflate the costs, opponents said.

McPherson said that such extraordinary costs stood the base closing process on its head, because although the Air Force believes that McClellan is the least costly to close down, “you’re so filthy that no one will touch you with a 10-foot pole--make that a 10-billion-foot pole.”

“I am agonizingly aware of that, commissioner,” Fazio said. “I could spend the rest of my career in Congress trying to get money to clean it up.”

McClellan has been threatened in each of three rounds of base closings since 1988, and Fazio said after his testimony that “we may have won the day, but have not won the battle.”

Today’s hearing will focus on the decision to close Alameda Naval Air Station and four other related Navy installations in the Bay Area.

The commission will travel to San Diego on Tuesday to hear testimony on El Toro Marine Air Station and the Recruit Training Center in San Diego.

Staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this article.