Base Delegation Has Meeting at White House : Navy: Officials talk with Chief of Staff Panetta about facilities’ fiscal importance.

Although the White House is attempting to remain at the periphery of the base closure process, a local group seeking to spare Ventura County’s Navy bases scored a coup on the final day of its lobbying trip here Friday by meeting briefly with White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta.

Lower-ranking aides to President Clinton had canceled meetings with the delegation earlier this week, concerned about a White House counsel’s recommendation that Clinton aides not meet with the crush of groups lobbying to keep their bases off the closure list.

But early Friday, Panetta and an adviser agreed to meet briefly with the so-called BRAC ’95 Task Force as long as the session dealt with Ventura County’s economy in general and not specifically the bases at Port Hueneme and Point Mugu.

“We told them about the contributions of the Navy bases,” said County Supervisor John K. Flynn, describing the 10-minute session. “But we didn’t tie it into pleading on BRAC. . . . They knew we were there because our economy was hurting for a lot of factors.”

Participants in the session said they also thanked the Clinton Administration for its help after the Northridge earthquake, described the work that Ventura County has done to reform the welfare system and cautioned that the economy in California has yet to rebound.

By inference, County Supervisor Maggie Kildee said, the group was telling Panetta: “Don’t throw us another double whammy” by allowing the two critical bases to close.

While the White House will not have a direct role in compiling the list of base closures, the local delegates said they were pushing their message to as many people as possible--and the top aide to the nation’s commander in chief certainly could not hurt.

“I think you talk to as many people as you can talk to and you hope they remember what you say,” said defense contractor Bob Conroy, who accompanied the group. “By talking to them, we learn a lot about the process. We’re smarter now.”

The White House meeting, arranged by the group’s Washington lobbying firm, came after a morning session with staffers from the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, the group at the center of the effort to scale back the military. The staffers answered questions but did not give the delegation any sense of the bases’ future.

“We don’t know the fate of any bases now and we certainly don’t speculate,” said commission spokesman Wade Nelson. “These are informational meetings.”

Most of the base closure commission is not even in place. Former U.S. Sen. Alan Dixon has been named commission chairman, but Clinton and congressional leaders must still appoint seven more commissioners in coming months.

After Defense Secretary William J. Perry releases his recommended base closures in March, the Clinton appointees will review the list and come up with their own set of recommended consolidations. In a move to insulate the process from politics, Clinton and the Congress can reject the entire set of closures, but cannot remove individual bases from the final list.

In all, officials hope to cut 15% of the nation’s bases during this fourth round of closures, which began in 1988.

As they prepared to fly home Friday night, the Ventura County delegation agreed that it must continue exerting pressure in the coming months.

“There’s one thing we do know, we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Flynn said.

Especially important, members said, will be contacting more top officials in the Pentagon, where the initial base closure list will emerge.

“We’ve only just begun,” Kildee said.

Overall, the delegation met with more than a dozen government officials during its three-day lobbying blitz, ranging from rear admirals in the Pentagon to congressional staffers to the afternoon session with Panetta in the White House Roosevelt Room.

The trip, funded by local governments and corporations, began at a rapid pace Wednesday morning with a hectic day in the Pentagon and a quick half-hour lunch at its massive cafeteria.

But Washington-style schmoozing came later with a lunch sponsored by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) at a members-only Republican club and a dinner at a plush Capitol Hill restaurant.

Delegates avoided meeting any decision-makers at their accommodations, a Quality Hotel where rooms go for $69 a night.