Closing Mugu Would Be Too Costly, Panel Told : Military: Navy admiral puts the price tag at $800 million, more than needed to keep the facility open for decades, he says.

The commanding officer of the Point Mugu Navy base told federal commissioners Thursday that it would cost taxpayers more money over the next 63 years to shut down the missile-testing center near Oxnard than leave it open.

Adm. Dana B. McKinney said the Navy would have to spend a whopping $800 million to carry out the commission’s proposal to relocate the testing facilities to its sister base at China Lake, 160 miles away in the Mojave Desert.

“It’s a losing proposition,” McKinney said of the two bases under his command.

Given that most overlapping programs between the two bases were consolidated in recent years, transferring Point Mugu’s operations to China Lake would save only about $28 million a year, the admiral said. Factoring in inflation, he said, the merger would not break even for 63 years.

McKinney’s testimony was the centerpoint of an hourlong, multimedia presentation by supporters of Point Mugu at a public hearing before the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

Five of the eight commissioners attended the hearing and spent Thursday listening to arguments from communities supporting seven military installations in California that the commission has added to the Pentagon’s list of recommended closures.

Lee Grissom, Gov. Pete Wilson’s planning director, said that California has absorbed 70% of the jobs eliminated in the first three rounds of base closures since 1988 and 87% of the nationwide cuts during the round in 1993.

Losing the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and five other bases targeted by the Pentagon and the seven added by the commission would cost the state an additional 49,000 to 61,000 military and spinoff jobs, he said.

Quoting a Stanford economist, Grissom said that other than reunified Germany, “no place west of the former Iron Curtain has been as affected by the end of the Cold War as California.”

Hundreds of boisterous workers from McClellan Air Force Base packed the room, applauding public officials who urged the commissioners to save the base near Sacramento and its 13,500 jobs.

Point Mugu and other bases under scrutiny by the commission took a more low-key approach, deciding against bringing in supporters by the busload.

A small group of representatives from Riverside County objected to the proposed closure of a Corona-based naval laboratory, saying that the lab provides the Navy with independent, unbiased reports on the performance of its equipment and weapons.

“The independence is critical,” said Capt. Edward G. Schwier, commanding officer of the Naval Warfare Assessment Division in Corona. He suggested that putting the lab and its 1,011 scientists and engineers under the control of another base would compromise its effectiveness.

“It’s like moving Consumer Reports to Chrysler,” he told the commissioners.

Lou Rogers, head of a local union representing 2,000 civilian workers at Point Mugu, said he believes the threat of base closure has already had a detrimental impact on the base and the surrounding economy.

“Since we’ve been added to the list, the price of houses has dropped,” said Rogers of the National Assn. of Government Employees. “People have turned down jobs on base. They don’t want to come to a place that might close.”

For the most part, the panel of Point Mugu supporters concentrated on how it makes little financial or military sense to shut down the base--the motivating factors for the commissioners assigned to cut bases no longer affordable in the post-Cold War era.

“Ventura County citizens and residents support a strong national defense,” said Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn. “We all have a jewel in Point Mugu. It is too valuable for the nation, the Navy, the military establishment and Ventura County to relinquish.”

The panel, mostly members of the grass-roots lobbying group called the BRAC ’95 Task Force, pointed out that the Navy ranks Point Mugu No. 2 in military value among its 64 technical centers across the nation. China Lake is ranked No. 1.

The task force hired its own expert to do an independent financial analysis of the proposed merger of Point Mugu and China Lake--both as proposed by the commission and by a much-disputed Pentagon audit.

That analysis showed that the Pentagon auditors’ promise of $1.7 billion in savings within 20 years of the merger was hundreds of millions of dollars off the mark.

Furthermore, the task force separately projects no savings of tax dollars for more than 100 years, given the high cost of moving Point Mugu’s facilities and the additional expenses of trying to operate the sea test range off Ventura County’s coastline from 160 miles away in the desert.

In his testimony, McKinney also criticized the Pentagon audit, prepared by the Defense Department inspector general, for grossly exaggerating the potential savings.

“The redundant facilities and idle workers envisioned in the [inspector general’s] report do not exist, nor do the savings claimed in that report,” he said.

Commissioners Benjamin J. Montoya and Rebecca Cox aid they were intrigued by the figures on Point Mugu from the Navy and the local lobbying group, which included Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). But they stressed they wanted commission staff to verify them before drawing any conclusions.

“You can always play with numbers,” Cox said. “We are going to have to look at them and see if we can come up with something that seems reasonable.”

Montoya and Cox said they were looking forward to touring Point Mugu on Tuesday. They will be accompanied by Ventura County’s two congressmen and a growing group of naval officers.

Beginning June 22, the commissioners will vote on which of 181 bases under scrutiny should close. They must forward their final list of recommendations to President Clinton by July 1.