Closure Panel to Consider Adding Mugu to List : Navy: The BRAC staff will suggest shutting the base. Local defense contractors and officials are in a panic.

The nation’s base-closing commission will consider adding the Point Mugu Navy base and at least five other California military installations to the Pentagon’s list of facilities now being scrutinized for shutdown, sources said Tuesday.

At a hearing today on Capitol Hill, the commission staff will suggest closing Point Mugu near Oxnard based on an audit by the Defense Department concluding that the Navy could save $1.7 billion by moving most of Point Mugu’s missile-testing work and 9,000 jobs to its sister base at China Lake in the upper Mojave Desert.

The staff will also suggest that commissioners take a hard look at closing the Naval Warfare Assessment Division near Riverside, McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento and three Bay Area bases, according to sources close to the commission.

The Riverside facility, the Naval Supply Center in Oakland and two small shipbuilding and engineering facilities in San Francisco were removed from consideration earlier this year out of concern for the economy in California, where 22 bases have been ordered shut since 1988.

It takes a majority of the eight members of the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or BRAC, to add any bases to the hit list. If a base joins the list, said commission spokesman Wade Nelson, “All this means is that it will be added for further review. We are quite a few steps away from closing any bases.”

Yet the reports of the renewed threat to Point Mugu have spread panic among defense contractors and local officials who have been trying to protect Ventura County’s largest employer from being ordered to shut its gates.

“We are desperately short of funds to carry on this level of fight,” said Cal Carrera, a defense industry executive and co-chairman of the county’s BRAC ’95 Task Force.

“I call on every employee of Point Mugu, every contractor and every citizen who cares about property value and quality of life in the county to send us anything they can,” Carrera said in his public appeal for donations. “We need a quick $40,000.”

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein made last-minute appeals to commissioners Tuesday to keep Point Mugu and other California bases off the hit list.

None of the last-ditch efforts seemed to make much headway, he said.

“It is my understanding that we have one rogue commissioner who is intent on making a motion to add Mugu to the list,” Gallegly said. “We had hoped to get this man’s attention.”

Even if Point Mugu is added, the congressman said, supporters have a strong case to defend the base against a report by the Defense Department’s inspector general that Gallegly said was full of errors. “It’s an out-and-out fraud,” he said.

The 57-page report was issued June 8, 1994, but was kept secret several months until it was disclosed in The Times. In the report, auditors concluded that the Navy could eliminate overlapping programs and save $1.7 billion over the next 20 years if it moved most of Point Mugu’s weapons-testing work to China Lake.

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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.

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

They claimed numerous errors in the report, including those that projected large savings of tax dollars by combining work on the Navy’s FA-18 Hornet jet fighter.

Those projected cost reductions, Navy officials said, were literally off base: All of Point Mugu’s Hornets were transferred to China Lake years ago, where nearly all of the testing is now done.

In developing their recommendations, Pentagon officials disregarded the report and its findings, saying the inspector general has no authority to make suggestions on base closures.

Adm. Dana B. McKinney, commanding officer of both Point Mugu and China Lake, said he was surprised that the commission would consider the inspector general’s report as a reason for adding Point Mugu to the closure list.

“If that is the basis, the IG report will finally get all of the scrutiny it deserves,” McKinney said.

On Saturday, McKinney was rerouted from his flight in Pensacola, Fla., to Washington, D.C., so he could rebut the inspector general’s report and argue the merits of keeping Point Mugu open. Navy officials say the base is needed as the launching pad for its weapons-testing range that stretches for 36,000 square miles over the Pacific Ocean.

McKinney warned it would be a big mistake for Point Mugu to be closed because it is ranked second-highest in military value among the Navy’s 64 technical centers.

“I view this as an unfortunate turn of events,” McKinney said, after learning from Navy officials of the commission’s interest in Point Mugu. “If, in fact, it gets put on the list, we will have to counter as we can.”

In previous base-closing rounds, commissioners have agreed to add bases to the Pentagon’s list for the purpose of closer examination--particularly if they catch the interest of a fellow commissioner.

But the vast majority of these late additions were never ordered closed. When all of the evidence is presented, the commissioners have tended to stick closely to the official recommendations from the Pentagon.

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The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission is already considering the shutdown of a number of California bases that the Pentagon argued are no longer affordable in the post-Cold War era.

They include the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, the Onizuka Air Station in San Jose and the Air National Guard stations in Ontario and North Highlands. The commission could also realign four other military installations.

The commissioners will visit any add-on bases and hold regional hearings to receive local comment. They must complete their deliberations and forward their list of recommended closures to President Clinton by July 1.