Official Dismisses Report on Base Closure : Point Mugu: Assistant Defense Secretary Gotbaum says Pentagon inspector general may not influence fate of Navy installation.

A top Pentagon official on Thursday said that the Defense Department cannot use a controversial report that advocates shutting down Point Mugu’s Navy base in drawing up its official hit list of bases recommended for closure.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Joshua Gotbaum said that the department’s inspector general does not have the legal authority to influence the fate of military installations under the nation’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) law.

“Congress has set up a special set of tests and procedures in making these obviously difficult and painful decisions,” Gotbaum said in an interview. “The inspector general’s report was developed for a different purpose and cannot be used for a BRAC recommendation.”

Gotbaum’s interpretation of the rules is significant because he is overseeing the Pentagon effort to decide which bases should be offered for sacrifice in next year’s round of closures.

His stance on the issue sides with Navy and congressional critics, who have raised objections to the report’s suggestion to move most of Point Mugu’s missile-testing functions and thousands of jobs to its sister base at China Lake in the upper Mojave Desert.

“Certainly, it just reinforces the argument we’ve been trying to make from Day 1,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). “This kind of report is not germane to the base-closing process.”

The inspector general’s office issued the confidential report last June as an official base-closing document, arguing that the office has the authority to make such recommendations because it is deeply involved in the base-closing process. Specifically, its auditors have been assigned the responsibility of verifying all military data used in the base-closing process.

But in a Nov. 18 letter to Gallegly, Acting Inspector General Derek J. Vander Schaaf seemed to back off that position, even though he said he stood by the report’s conclusion.

He wrote that Gotbaum was aware that the report had been given to officials weighing which bases should close and it was up to Gotbaum to decide if the recommendations were useful.

Gotbaum said they were not.

“The inspector general does not have the authority to make a BRAC recommendation,” Gotbaum said. “He has a job in the BRAC process, but it not one to make independent BRAC recommendations.”

Furthermore, Gotbaum said the inspector general audits do not use the same criteria as official base-closing documents and the list of recommended closures will be based only on such official documents.

Gotbaum all but dismissed the significance of the report on Point Mugu.

“We recognize that there are lots of concerns in the base-closing process,” he said. “But this is not one of them.”

Gotbaum’s response came as a relief to Navy officials who have challenged the accuracy and assumptions of the report. It contends that the Navy could eliminate overlapping programs and save $1.7 billion over the next 20 years by moving most of Point Mugu’s operations to China Lake.

Auditors acknowledged there would be no net savings in the first five years because it would cost $518 million to move Point Mugu’s facilities and scatter most of its 9,000 jobs to China Lake and other bases.

Yet, Navy officials have challenged the notion there would be any savings, citing what they called the faulty assumption that Point Mugu is scheduled for a major reduction in workload.

For example, the inspector general audit projected that ongoing weapons testing work on the FA-18 Hornet jet fighter would amount to $15 million rather than the Navy’s estimate of $70 million a year.

Navy officials said that not only were the auditors’ projections off the mark, but the targeted program was literally off base. The vast majority of the work on the Hornets are done at China Lake, where they are stationed, not at Point Mugu.

“It is not the case that this massive duplication exists,” said Adm. Dana B. McKinney, commanding officer of both Point Mugu and China Lake, who signed a 43-page rebuttal to the audit.

In recent years, many of the programs at Point Mugu have merged with those at China Lake, making both bases more efficient, McKinney said. “I think we’ve made the point that we have done a lot of consolidation already.”

In March, the Secretary of Defense is scheduled to issue the list of bases recommended for closure. An independent base-closing commission then decides on a final list, which can be adopted or rejected as a whole by the President and Congress.