Local, State Leaders Press Panel to Keep Military Bases Open

The commission considering which of the nation’s military bases to close heard Thursday from California officials who complained that the state is being clobbered by too many base closings.

At issue were seven military installations in California, including bases in Ventura and Riverside counties, that the commission has added to the Pentagon’s list of recommended closures.

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

Losing the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and five other bases targeted by the Pentagon and the seven added by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission would cost the state another 49,000 to 61,000 military and spinoff jobs, he said.

Quoting a Stanford University 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.”

Five of the eight commissioners attended the session Thursday at which Congress members, local officials and military representatives defended their installations as crucial to the national defense and essential to local economies.

Adm. Dana B. McKinney, commanding officer of the Point Mugu naval installation, urged the commissioners to abandon their proposal to relocate the base’s missile-testing facilities to a sister base at China Lake, 160 miles away in the upper Mojave Desert.

McKinney said the Navy’s economic analysis shows that it would have to spend $800 million to move the oceanfront facilities to the desert.

Given that most overlapping programs 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. “It’s a losing proposition,” McKinney said.

McKinney was the principal speaker among a panel of Point Mugu supporters who focused their hourlong, multimedia presentation on the military importance of the weapons-testing facility, rather than the economic troubles that could result from losing 9,000 jobs and Ventura County’s largest employer.

A Ventura County grass-roots group did its own economic analysis of the transfer, concluding that taxpayers would not see any financial benefit for more than a century. Commissioners Benjamin J. Montoya and Rebecca Cox said they were intrigued by the figures, but want commission staff to verify them.

Riverside County representatives objected to the commission’s

proposed closure of a Corona-based laboratory, saying that the lab provides the Navy with independent, unbiased reports on the performance of equipment and weapons.

“The independence is critical,” said Capt. Edward G. Schwier, commanding officer of the Naval Warfare Assessment Division in Corona.

“It’s like moving Consumer Reports to Chrysler,” he told the commissioners, who must forward their list of recommendations to President Clinton by July 1.

Hundreds of workers from McClellan Air Force Base packed the auditorium, applauding officials who urged the commissioners to save the base, near Sacramento.