Task Force to Fight Base Closures

A task force of Ventura County business leaders plans to spend $260,000 to hire a Washington lobbying firm to represent the county and its two Navy bases as they prepare to undergo scrutiny by the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

The leaders said Wednesday that hiring a lobbyist will help prevent the possible closure of the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme and the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station, which together pump $1.5 billion into the local economy.

As the military continues to downsize, the local leaders, who call themselves the BRAC ’95 Task Force, said they fear both bases could be vulnerable but that Point Mugu may be at greater risk. Federal officials have said that military testing and evaluation facilities such as those at Point Mugu will undergo examination by the commission for the first time.

Within two weeks, task force members are expected to sign a 12-month contract with the firm of Thicksten, Grimm and Burgum Inc. for lobbying services in Washington, said Jerry Etchingham, an Oxnard lawyer who is coordinating the lobbying effort.

“This firm has already been involved in the (base-closure) process several times and has specialized in this area,” Etchingham said. “We are hoping that they will provide us with the kind of voice in Washington that will help keep our bases.”

Representatives of the lobbying firm could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

At a breakfast meeting Wednesday, members of the task force painted a grim picture for the county should the bases close.

The county could lose as much as $1.5 billion in federal contracts and money spent on utilities and other expenses to keep the bases operating. Additionally, $600 million in payroll dollars would be lost, affecting more than 20,000 families, said Rod Franz, a spokesman for the task force.

“Right now, we have communities in northern Florida and Maryland actively marketing their bases directly against ours,” Franz said at the meeting. “Historically, if a military base is included on an initial (base closure) list it has over a 90% chance of being closed.”

The task force, a committee of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., hopes to raise more than $350,000 in the upcoming months to pay for the lobbying firm’s contract and underwrite the campaign to keep the bases open, Etchingham said.

The group will seek an estimated $150,000 from Ventura County and local city governments, $50,000 from companies with government contracts, $50,000 in donations from federal employees and $100,000 from the Ventura County business community at large.

Local Navy officials said they were pleased to hear that the lobbying firm will soon be working to help keep their facilities open.

“We appreciate the task force’s commitment in improving awareness of the Navy’s contributions to the Ventura County community,” said Alan Alpers, a Navy spokesman.

Officials from both bases said they are continuing to provide the Department of Defense with detailed information about the installations and the communities around them--a process known as a “data call.” The gathering of such information is the first step in the biannual base-closing system. All military installations in the country are subject to answering the data call.

The next round of closures will be decided by the federally appointed base-closure commission next February and announced to the public in July, 1995.