Harman: A 6-Month Progress Report : Congress: Freshman representative sees some progress on area’s jobs and economy, but would rather focus on nuts and bolts of local issues.

Voters sent Jane Harman to Congress to retain jobs and improve the local economy, she said.

Looking back on her first six months in office, Harman (D-Marina del Rey) said Thursday she has made headway on those principal issues and several others.

Sipping a diet soda and enduring a headache, Harman met for more than an hour with local reporters in her ninth-floor office in the Union Bank building in Westchester. On one wall hangs a donated print of a Roy Lichtenstein lithograph of the Oval Office with the caption, “A New Generation of Leadership.”

“I liked the idea of it,” said Harman, a member of a freshman class of representatives sent to Washington partly out of voter frustration with the way things were being done.

Harman said she is acutely aware of those feelings. “There is an enormous appetite for change in government,” she said.

But asked to list her achievements so far, Harman focused on nuts-and-bolts issues in her 36th District, which covers much of the South Bay from Marina del Rey to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

First, she said, she sought and won appointments to the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Both committees play critical roles in Defense Department issues and thus have a direct impact on the South Bay’s huge aerospace industry, which has suffered as the Pentagon scales back funding in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

Then came the round of military base closures. Harman said she and other members of the California congressional delegation helped to keep the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo and the Long Beach Naval Shipyard off the closure list, which President Clinton accepted last week.

She said she plans to begin working now to ensure that both bases are kept off the Pentagon’s 1995 list, the third and last round of base closures.

Roughly 7,000 people work at the El Segundo base, and contractors and support services employ another 20,000 to 50,000, Harman said. The Air Force has threatened to move the base elsewhere mainly because its personnel have trouble finding affordable housing in the area.

To ease those concerns, Los Angeles, state and federal officials reached an agreement last year to lease 23 acres in San Pedro to the Air Force for new housing that is to provide 250 multifamily units. Harman said she expects the lease to be signed by the end of the month, although the Air Force has not guaranteed that building the housing will prevent it from moving the base.

“That will make it far less likely that the base will be moved in ‘95,” Harman said.

Aside from saving the bases, Harman also played up the importance of helping local defense contractors convert their operations to peacetime uses.

In May, she introduced the Defense Reinvestment and High-Tech Job Act of 1993, which would provide Pentagon contractors with tax breaks and other incentives to convert their operations. Harman said she has been working to win bipartisan support for the measure, something that she is optimistic will happen by fall when she expects the House Ways and Means Committee, the tax-writing panel, to take up the bill.

Harman said she expects the $2-billion F/A-18 Hornet program to be continued, meaning more business for McDonnell Douglas in El Segundo. Harman said 40% of the aircraft is made in El Segundo and the rest in St. Louis.

Other issues Harman addressed included:

* Dredging in Marina del Rey: Harman said a House subcommittee has approved spending $2.1 million to dredge Marina del Rey and $175,000 for a navigation study. The dredging is needed to remove sediment piling up at the harbor entrance, a condition caused by winter storms.

The study, she said, should explore whether the marina entrance channel needs to be redesigned to control the flow of toxic sediment. The full House has yet to take up the appropriation, which would then go before the Senate.

* Leasing Los Angeles International Airport: Harman seemed eager to discuss the issue, but declined to say whether she thinks it is a good idea. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has touted leasing the airport as a way to generate city revenue. Harman said she has not spoken at length with Riordan about the issue, and until then would not take a stand. But she added, “I’m certainly willing to entertain innovative solutions” to Los Angeles’ fiscal troubles.

* President Clinton and the budget: Harman was coy on her expectations now that a House and Senate conference committee is working on a federal budget compromise. “I don’t know where the bill is going to come out and I don’t want to speculate,” she said.

Still, she has reservations about the way the Clinton presidency has gone so far. She criticized the President for “not hanging tough” on some issues, including his backpedaling on cutting grazing fees for farmers. Harman also said Clinton misnamed his failed “Economic Stimulus Package.”

“I would have named it a jobs package and included it in a basic (budget) bill,” Harman said.

Harman, who believes homosexuals should have the right to serve in the military, said Clinton erred in making the issue a top priority. He should have waited until economic issues were resolved before sparking such an emotional debate, Harman said.

But she is not giving up on her fellow Democrat, and expects fewer gaffes in the future.

“I think Clinton is more seasoned now,” Harman said.

And, she said, so is she.

Although she had served in the Carter Administration in the 1970s, Harman said she has had to learn to deal with a bureaucracy that has grown enormously since then.

Her family demands also have grown; she had two children then and four now.

Still, she said she tries to make it home to the district every weekend, where she meets shoppers Saturday mornings in front of supermarkets, hearing their concerns.

Mostly they say “cut spending,” although few offer specifics on where spending should be cut, she said.

Harman also recently opened a satellite office--a trailer behind Torrance City Hall--as a way of keeping in touch with the southern, and most populous, end of her district.

“I wanted to make a statement that I am part of (Torrance),” she said. “I am accessible, and that is essentially a storefront.”