Relieved Backers to Seek More Jobs for Bases : Military: Local defense experts will study Pentagon’s plans. They hope to transfer spoils from ill-fated installations.

With Ventura County’s Navy bases secure from Pentagon cuts, the lobbying group set up to defend the local military payroll has decided to go on the offensive and hunt for more jobs for Point Mugu and Port Hueneme.

A local group of defense experts this morning will pore over the Pentagon’s list of recommended base closures--a list that spares Point Mugu, and calls for transferring 109 jobs to Port Hueneme.

“Our strategy needs to be to bring every bit of work we can to Point Mugu,” said Ed Barrineau, a defense industry executive and adviser to a local lobbying task force.

Barrineau, a retired admiral who used to run Point Mugu, and others working with the BRAC ’95 Task Force will see if they can spot strong economic arguments to justify transferring more of the spoils from ill-fated bases to those in Ventura County.

Meanwhile, local Navy workers were relieved that the Pentagon decided to spare Point Mugu and Port Hueneme.

“There are a lot of smiling faces,” said Point Mugu spokesman Alan Alpers. The threat of shutting down Point Mugu has been the No. 1 topic around water coolers for the past 18 months, he said. “People are generally pleased with the announcement. They are realizing the value the Navy places on the Mugu site.”

In releasing the Pentagon recommendations Tuesday, Defense Secretary William Perry said he adopted all of the Navy’s suggestions and forwarded them to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

The commission has until July 1 to accept, reject or alter the Pentagon’s recommendations. In previous rounds, the eight-member commission has closely adhered to the Defense Department’s wishes.

Maggie Kildee, chairwoman of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, said it was too soon for community leaders to relax. “We have to make sure,” she said, “that somebody doesn’t put our bases on the list while we’re looking the other way.”

The Pentagon’s thick set of recommendations, affecting 146 military installations across the county, does not mention Point Mugu’s Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division--a 9,000-employee facility believed to be vulnerable during this round of closures.

Local leaders feared the base would be targeted in a Pentagon effort to consolidate overlapping testing and research programs among the branches of the armed services.

But the list released Tuesday not only skipped over Point Mugu, but also its chief competitors in the Navy and Air Force. Without rivals gunning for the base, Point Mugu is less likely to get caught in an interservice skirmish later in the base-closing process.

Steve Mendonca, a Point Mugu department head who shepherded base-closing information to Navy brass, said he was not surprised given the high military value placed on the base, its testing of sophisticated weaponry and its missile-firing range that stretches far into the Pacific Ocean.

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“There were a whole bunch of scenarios involving Point Mugu and they didn’t make sense for a variety of reasons,” Mendonca said. “I guess they all fell out.”

The Defense Department also recommended keeping all of the naval facilities on the Port Hueneme base, and adding another 107 engineers and scientists to the 2,377 employees who work for the Port Hueneme division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

The proposed transfers would come from a Naval facility in Louisville, Ky., that the Pentagon has twice before recommended for closure. Louisville community leaders vowed to plead their case once again before the base-closing commission in coming months to try to save the 1,850 jobs at stake.

“It’s not the largest employer in town, but this place has been doing the nation’s business since World War II and the community is rallying around it for good old-fashioned patriotism,” said Frank Jemley, of the Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce. “We think it makes financial and military readiness sense to keep a portion of the facility open.”

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Capt. Scott Beachy, commander of the Port Hueneme division, said he is familiar with the engineering work proposed to be transferred from its sister base in Louisville. But the two centers have yet to determine how many employees would move because both staffs perform similar work, and there could be some overlap.

At Port Hueneme, the center’s engineers and scientists ferret out computer glitches and other malfunctions to keep the Navy’s most sophisticated shipboard weapons ready for war.

Those in Louisville specifically do the maintenance and trouble-shooting on a Gatling gun and two other large guns used on Navy vessels.

The Defense Department also recommended two jobs be moved to Port Hueneme’s Naval Construction Battalion Center, the West Coast headquarters for Seabee construction crews.

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Capt. John Doyle, the executive officer of the Seabee base, said he has been unable to figure out where those two jobs are coming from or what they would do. “We don’t know yet,” he said, and expected to hear the details in the next few days.

Overall, Doyle said the Seabees were satisfied to remain unscathed by the latest round of base-closure recommendations. “The honest reaction: We are all pleased that the Construction Battalion Center was not on the proposed list to be closed.”

In addition to sparing Ventura County’s bases, Pentagon officials also took good care of Point Mugu’s biggest competitors.

Point Mugu’s sister Navy base at China Lake in the upper Mojave Desert, and a rival Air Force Base in Eglin, Fla., both ended up with a net gain of jobs.

The Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division at China Lake is slated to receive 302 employees from another Navy base proposed to close in Indianapolis.

Although the Pentagon wants to send 719 jobs to Eglin Air Force Base, it also proposed stripping 85 employees from the base now involving in electronic testing of missiles and aircraft.

Local base supporters hope that extra workload will satisfy the appetite of military boosters in China Lake and Eglin who have coveted the missile-testing work performed at Point Mugu.

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The BRAC ’95 Task Force has been most concerned about the future of Point Mugu because of a widespread agreement in defense circles that there is too much overlap in missile-testing programs in the Air Force and the Navy.

The Defense Department set up a special group to consider consolidating similar weapons-testing programs. But the group deferred to the Navy and the Air Force, allowing them to pick their own bases to cut.

The independent base-closing commission has also assigned staff to evaluate such interservice consolidations. And some local strategists worry that Point Mugu could get pulled into a battle for its life, particularly if one of its competitors were to give the commission damaging documents or make a play for Point Mugu’s activities.

“I wish I could be assured that this battle is really over,” said Cal Carrera, co-chairman of the BRAC ’95 Task Force. “But there is an awful lot of work to get ready in case something blows up before the commission.”

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In addition to preparing a defensive strategy for Point Mugu, the BRAC ’95 Task Force also plans to join its competitors in the quest for expansion.

“We need to take an offensive position,” Supervisor John K. Flynn told a meeting of task force advisers Tuesday. He suggested the local group fight to shore up Point Mugu with extra work that has been drained by general cutbacks since the end of the Cold War.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) has arrived at the same strategy.

“There is obviously going to be an opportunity to promote the ability of Mugu or Hueneme to take over some functions from other bases,” Gallegly said. “If we can do a better job than other folks, we have the responsibility of tooting our own horn and making sure we are considered.”

Weiss reported from Ventura and Lacey from Washington.

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