Base Closure Panel Meets to Start Its Decision-Making

The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission on Friday pored over stacks of data as it prepares for four days of tough decision-making next week on which military installations must be sacrificed to leaner post-Cold War budgets.

The seven-member commission took no votes during the 9 1/2-hour meeting but used the session to review some of the more complicated issues that have come up during the past three months of testimony on the Pentagon’s original list of threatened facilities.

Fifteen major California bases are being reviewed as possible victims.

The last item on the panel’s agenda was the complicated transfer of troops, planes and helicopters among several Southern California Marine and Navy bases--focusing on the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego County.

The Navy recommended that the El Toro Marine base be closed and its personnel and equipment transferred to Miramar and Camp Pendleton, also in San Diego County. But community opposition to that plan has resulted in several alternative scenarios, including the resuscitation of the Tustin Marine base--ordered closed two years ago--and closing Miramar instead.

Viewing the dizzying array of options, the panel raised few questions and dropped no hints about which plan was favored.

But Commissioner Harry C. McPherson Jr. commented that all the options seemed to offer about the same amount of long-term savings and return on investment.

“This appears to be a decision based--not on dollars--but operating issues,” McPherson said.

Commissioner Beverly Byron agreed: “It all comes down to military value.”

By law, the commission must attach the greatest importance on the military value of the bases under review for closure. The cost factor ranks fourth out of eight criteria.

The seven options being considered by the commission as alternatives to the Pentagon’s original proposal have one-time moving costs ranging from $320.6 million to $1.6 billion, with the cheapest being an almost “do nothing” plan that would leave El Toro and Tustin open and close Miramar. Most of the options have a savings over 20 years ranging between $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion.

Commissioner Hansford T. Johnson said he was under the impression that the Marine Corps “was having second thoughts” about closing El Toro and moving to Miramar. El Toro base commanders argue that it will cost nearly four times as much to close the base as the Defense Department estimates.

But in a Thursday commission hearing, a Marine general insisted that the corps’ original position on closing El Toro was unchanged.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) sent a letter to the commission Friday urging that neither El Toro nor Miramar be ordered closed this year and that the commission delay any decision affecting the two bases until the 1995 round of base closings.

“So much uncertainty about the validity of the Pentagon’s original estimates has surfaced during your investigations that you must take pause,” Cox wrote.

The commission earlier in the day devoted its time to questioning staff on cumulative economic impact, shipyards, large aircraft bases and other issues.

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.