Pentagon Picks 4 California Sites for Finance Centers : Military: Accounting posts will add 1,800 federal jobs. They will be at Norton AFB, Ft. Ord, Oakland Naval Center and San Diego.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that four sites in California have been selected as regional finance centers, a group of Defense Department accounting outposts that should bring about 1,800 new jobs to the state.
After several years of intense national competition from communities around the country, the Pentagon picked Norton Air Force Base, Ft. Ord, the Oakland Naval Supply Center and a yet-to-be named location in San Diego as the winning California communities. Twenty new satellite sites were selected nationwide.
Each regional accounting center will employ 750 workers and bring in about $48 million annually to their host communities, the Pentagon said. About 1,200 accounting jobs already exist at the four California sites, bringing the statewide total to 3,000 federal accounting jobs.
“These are very, very important jobs to our region,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) whose district includes Norton Air Force Base, which has been deactivated. “We’ve been devastated by base closings, military downsizing and aerospace cutbacks. This is an opportunity to fill a vacuum and an important building block to begin planning for a long-term economic renewal.”
In a related development, Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee overseeing base closings, said Tuesday that Pentagon officials have privately discussed a Clinton Administration plan to delay next spring’s scheduled round of base closings until after the 1996 election.
A senior Pentagon official, according to wire reports, said a 1997 base closure round could be added, softening the impact of next year’s scheduled round in which California is expected to suffer even more cutbacks.
Although no other state won four satellite sites, the 3,000 accounting jobs were not as many as state officials had once hoped for. Under a different selection process, the Norton Air Force Base site near San Bernardino became the sole California finalist for a larger accounting facility that promised 4,000 jobs.
Timothy Steinhaus, administrator of the San Bernardino Economic Development Agency, which made the original application for the accounting center at the Air Force base, said even a small piece of the action was better than nothing.
“We’re happy to get anything,” he said. “They (the Department of Defense) spread the wealth around a little bit more than was originally thought.”
The earlier selection process, which forced competing communities to offer financial incentives to win the sites, was scrapped last year by former Defense Secretary Les Aspin.
Under the revised Pentagon plan, five large existing Defense Finance and Accounting Service centers in Ohio, Colorado, Indiana and Missouri were retained, and 20 new satellite centers were established in 14 states nationwide. Overall, the Pentagon is reducing its finance centers from 300 to 25 and cutting 46,000 personnel to 22,000.
As late as last week, congressional sources indicated that only two California sites were being seriously considered--Norton and Mare Island Naval Shipyard, both ordered closed by the base closing commission. The Oakland and San Diego selections seemed to take some members by surprise.
Times staff writer Tom Gorman in Riverside contributed to this story.
