4 From Base Closure Panel Tour Shipyard

Four members of the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission browsed through machine shops at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard on Thursday, smiled at sandblasters and welders and studied the only dry dock within 1,500 miles that is large enough to service an aircraft carrier.

But despite the pleas of workers and politicians, the commissioners offered little concrete hope that they will reject Secretary of Defense William J. Perry’s recommendation of two months ago that the shipyard be closed.

To override Perry, said Commissioner Benjamin F. Montoya, the commission would have to find “substantial deviation” from the criteria established by the federal Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 for determining a facility’s role in the scaled-back peacetime military.

According to commission staff, the top criteria emphasize military value. Perry and Navy officials have said that the shipyard, which employs 3,100, is expendable because it does not have the ability to service nuclear vessels.

In the latest round of cutbacks, Perry has targeted 33 major military installations. Closing the shipyard, defense officials say, will save the federal government $1.9 billion over the next 20 years, the largest single saving on Perry’s list.

But defenders of the Long Beach facility say it is the only one of eight Navy shipyards that operates in the black, actually having saved the federal government $102 million since 1988.

The odds are against the commission stepping in to save any of the targeted military installations. In two previous rounds of base closings, the commission rejected Department of Defense targets in only 29 of 252 cases.

Accompanying the four commissioners--half of the eight-member commission--on the shipyard tour were many elected officials from southeast Los Angeles County and Orange County .

Gov. Pete Wilson also appeared in support of the shipyard. Still on the mend from throat surgery two weeks ago, he did not speak.

The pro-shipyard forces, who have united under the banner of the Southern California Save Our Shipyard Committee, were saving most of their ammunition for today, when they will make a last-ditch presentation at a regional hearing of the full commission in San Francisco.