El Toro May Be Losing in Battle of the Bases : Military: Rival Miramar wins praise of defense panel members, who say issues are settled but no decision made.

Members of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission said Thursday they were favorably impressed by arguments in favor of keeping open San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station instead of El Toro Marine base in Orange County.

Although commission members emphasized that no final decision would be reached until later this month, they said that questions raised by El Toro commanders and Orange County citizens about the Pentagon plan to move El Toro’s Marine aviation units to Miramar had been satisfactorily answered during two days of base tours and hearings in San Diego.

“My mind is not made up, but to be totally candid . . . it appears now from my standpoint that Miramar is an asset, and a very good one,” commission Chairman James Courter said.

Courter also said that Orange County opponents of the El Toro closing had not relied on an “apples to apples” comparison when arguing that the shutdown would cost almost $1 billion more than the Pentagon had projected.

“Keeping in my mind that communities are advocates for their facilities, they will not fabricate data,” Courter said, “but they will do other things to put their facility in the best light.”

He also said that Miramar had a “high” military value, one of the top criteria used by the commission in determining which bases stay open.

The chairman’s favorable comments about Miramar were echoed by Commissioner Peter B. Bowman, the only member who has toured both bases. “I was favorably impressed by what I saw at Miramar,” Bowman said.

The remarks by Courter and other commission members came during a brief news conference they held after hearing arguments in favor of keeping Miramar open. The naval air station was not on the original list of bases targeted for closure that the Pentagon made public two months ago, and was only added after Marine commanders at El Toro produced estimates saying the proposed move to Miramar would cost taxpayers $1.2 billion instead of the $340 million budgeted by the Pentagon.

In what was perhaps an equally telling comment about El Toro’s future, Gov. Pete Wilson told reporters he would prefer to see El Toro’s Marines move to Miramar, rather than see Miramar closed.

“My first choice is for things to continue as they are,” Wilson said. “But (moving the El Toro Marines to Miramar) certainly is preferable to (Miramar) being closed.”

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who has led the fight to keep El Toro open, played down the commissioners’ praise of Miramar, saying that the commissioners would be making similar comments about El Toro if Thursday’s public hearing had been held in Orange County instead of San Diego.

Cox said that, after a meeting in Washington last Friday with Courter and Commissioner Beverly Byron, he was left with the impression that El Toro would be spared and Miramar closed. “That was Friday, today is a different day. I don’t know whether they say that to all the girls, or what,” Cox said.

During his formal presentation before the commission, Wilson did not mention a preference for either base, and generally confined his remarks to the devastating effect he said the numerous proposed base closures would have on California’s economy.

The Pentagon’s original base-closing list included 10 major California installations, and the commission has since added nine to that list.

U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein joined Wilson at the hearing, repeating their arguments that California, in comparison to other states, would be disproportionately affected in terms of the civilian and military jobs that will be lost in the base closures. In her testimony, Feinstein noted that cutbacks in defense contracts since 1988 had cost Orange County 70,000 to 75,000 jobs.

When it came time for the San Diegans to make their arguments, Reps. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego) and Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the arguments used by Orange County to persuade the federal panel to consider closing Miramar instead of El Toro, moving the Navy jets based at Miramar to the Lemoore Naval Air Station in Central California.

They also argued that it would be senseless to close Miramar at a time when the Navy is making San Diego its major port for training and other operations.

“I would close El Toro,” Cunningham told the commission. “It’s going to go away, it’s limited in what it can expand to. And no one is, I think, foolish enough to think that we are not going to end up in another conflict within a very short period of time and need . . . the possibility of expansion.”

Hunter added: “Economics aside, you guys have to be concerned with readiness, and that’s the way to keep readiness, to keep the (San Diego) complex together.”

On the question of expansion, Orange County officials and citizen groups had argued that El Toro, with 4,738 acres, had more capacity for expansion than Miramar, with 23,184 acres, because much of Miramar’s land is environmentally sensitive.

They also argued that the Navy had not considered the cost of building a helicopter base or housing for the troops at Miramar, and that fixed-wing aircraft would not mix well with helicopters in the San Diego airspace.

But Cunningham argued that the rival cost estimates produced by the El Toro Marines and Orange County officials were vastly overstated.

“Even a preliminary review of the Orange County figures shows an excess of over $600 million,” Cunningham informed the commissioners.

He said that the Orange County figures were padded with $175 million in questionable costs that were incorrectly attributed to inflation, and contained more than $400 million in projected costs for base housing that did not need to be built. The Orange County figures also included $30 million in unexplained and unsubstantiated environmental mitigation costs, he said.

Newport Beach officials, who are advocating that El Toro be closed so that it can be converted into a commercial airport, said they helped Cunningham’s office review the Orange County cost estimates.

“It’s not surprising that the cost estimate (offered) by El Toro Marines and Orange County was $1 billion” higher than the Pentagon’s projections, Courter said. “But it’s also not surprising that’s its not comparing apples to apples.”

Cox later disputed Cunningham’s assessment, saying that the figures were calculated by using the Pentagon’s own guidelines. Ultimately, he said, the commission staff will sort through the various numbers and find that Orange County is right.

Congressmen “cannot have different opinions about the speed of light or the rate at which objects fall to Earth,” Cox remarked.

But Miramar’s defenders did not limit their arguments to economic ones.

They said that, contrary to the impression left by Orange County officials, environmentally sensitive land at Miramar would be better protected by keeping the base open, since its continued operation as a military facility would guarantee that the land would be protected from development.

Commission spokesman Tom Houston said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had also dispelled concerns about Miramar’s ability to expand base facilities, indicating that it would be able to expand without encroaching on environmentally sensitive land.

Cunningham said that, even after taking into consideration the environmentally sensitive areas of Miramar, there are still 2,400 acres available for base expansion.

He said that El Toro, by comparison, is “maxed out” operationally because of agreements with surrounding communities to limit noise. El Toro has even agreed to avoid night operations to avoid disturbing neighboring communities.

One lingering concern mentioned by Bowman was where best to locate the helicopters now at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, which was officially targeted for closing two years ago, but could conceivably be spared in one scenario under consideration by the commission.

The Pentagon plan to transfer Tustin’s helicopter units to Miramar is generally considered too expensive. Cunningham suggested that the helicopters be moved to Camp Pendleton or other bases.

There is little disagreement, even from Tustin city officials, that the base there should close as originally scheduled. But Tustin officials, along with Cox and the Orange County delegation, are recommending that the helicopters go to March Air Force Base.

Commissioner Beverly Byron said she needed to study various options before discussing her preferences on the El Toro-Miramar battle, but she noted that “any time you refine proposals . . . the better they get.”