State Girds for Final Fight on Base Closures : Military: Thousands of jobs hinge on the last in a series of Defense Department cutbacks. Federal commission will meet this week to decide fate of installations, including Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

By JAMES BORNEMEIER

June 19, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

State officials and local communities are bracing for another spate of awful news this week when a federal commission meets to finalize a list of Defense Department facilities to be closed--victims of too many military bases and too few federal dollars.

At stake will be thousands of jobs and the shuttering of venerable military installations such as Long Beach Naval Shipyard, McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and the Point Mugu naval base in Ventura County.

It will be the fourth in a series of fiercely contested nationwide base-closing procedures that began in 1988 and loosed havoc on the heavily defense-dependent California economy.

No state benefited so greatly from the massive buildup of military bases and industrial infrastructure that accompanied the country’s arming for World War II and its subsequent role as a superpower. No state has suffered so mightily from the cutbacks in defense as the Cold War was being won.

Between 1988 and 1992, California’s share of defense spending shrank by $9 billion. The Commission on State Finance estimates that by 1997, spending will drop to $33 billion, compared to $60 billion in 1988.

Projections by the U.S. Defense Conversion Commission show California’s defense industry job losses about triple those of New York or Texas, the next two most affected states.

State officials estimate that if all the current Pentagon and commission closure recommendations are approved in the coming week, the state could lose as many as 30,000 military and civilian jobs.

In earlier rounds, the state has already lost 22 bases--more than any other state--and California officials estimate that the cumulative impact, including this year’s proposed closures and realignments, will be more than 200,000 jobs and $7 billion in economic activity.

At least state and local officials can take some comfort from the Defense Base Closing and Realign ment Commission deliberations starting Thursday: The current round is the last of three mandated by a 1990 base-closing law.

Compared to two years ago, when seven major California bases were shut down, the Pentagon seemed to go easy on the state when it issued its initial list of closure candidates in late February.

The Long Beach Naval Shipyard, with 3,700 civilian jobs at stake, was the lone big target, although more than 20 other bases were variously affected by closures or realignment.

But in May, the commission added eight more bases to the list, including McClellan Air Force Base with 10,600 civilian jobs, and the Naval Air Warfare Center at Point Mugu, Ventura County’s largest employer with 4,600 civilian jobs at stake.

The base closure commission added Point Mugu to the list of threatened bases to review a Pentagon study that suggested huge cost savings if Point Mugu’s sea testing range off the coast of Ventura County were preserved, but most of the base’s other functions were transferred to nearby installations at China Lake and Port Hueneme.

Prominent state politicians were outraged. “Enough is enough,” grumbled Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“I am very disturbed about the decision by the base closure commission to add additional California bases to the list of those being considered for closure,” Feinstein said. “The Pentagon wants these bases open for a very good reason. They are important military installations . . . and their closure would have a severe economic impact on the largest state in the union.”

But to many observers, the commission’s actions came as no great surprise.

The 1995 finale was supposed to be--in the words of the late Defense Secretary Les Aspin--the “mother of all base closings.” Yet the current Pentagon list targets 146 bases nationwide, compared to 175 closures and realignments in the 1993 round.

In testimony before the commission, William J. Perry, Aspin’s successor, explained that the high front-end costs of closing additional bases and the Pentagon’s struggle to cope with a backlog of already shuttered bases kept the ’95 round more modest in scope.

Many Republicans thought they saw, instead, presidential politics at play: sparing big states--such as California, which could deliver large blocs of electoral votes to President Clinton in his presumed reelection bid--the unpleasantness of more military cutbacks.

Grabbing most of the attention was the Pentagon’s decision to keep open McClellan Air Force Base and Kelly Air Force Base in Texas. They are two of five air logistic centers nationwide that perform high-tech maintenance, and Pentagon analyses have determined that there is not enough work to justify keeping all five bases open.

Despite suggestions that McClellan and Kelly be closed, the Air Force elected to preserve all five by downsizing and consolidating functions. Under this plan, McClellan would have actually picked up 379 additional military and civilian jobs.

This was tantamount to waving a red flag before the commission, whose fundamental task is to review the service’s closure decisions objectively. At a May 10 hearing, the Air Force was raked over the coals for preserving the five depots. The commission staff questioned the Air Force conclusion that it would save $880 million through realignment, rather than closing two depots.

The staff disputed Air Force assumptions that it would take six years to shut down a depot and eliminate all the jobs. The Army and Navy concluded that similar commands could be phased out in four years with swifter cutbacks in personnel. Those services have also aggressively reduced their excess maintenance facilities.

Judy Ann Miller, the director of the state Office of Military Base Retention, was upset at the way the Air Force handled the McClellan matter.

“It got off to a bad start,” Miller said. “Every time the commission asked a question about the downsizing recommendation, [the Air Force] kept going back to their staff for answers. It gave the impression of uncertainty over the Pentagon’s final decision to spare McClellan.”

With these inconsistencies in mind, the commission voted 8 to 0 to add all five Air Force bases and their logistic centers. In that instant, the future of McClellan became very much in doubt, and it became the state’s biggest possible victim during this final round of base closures.

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), whose district includes the sprawling McClellan base, has fought off previous closure attempts.

Last week, during two days of testimony allotted to members of Congress to make their final pitches to the commission, Fazio and four neighboring House colleagues mounted a concerted effort to save the facility.

With boxes of 250,000 supportive community letters displayed for effect, Fazio and his fellow members tried to rehabilitate the Pentagon’s original recommendation to keep McClellan open.

“We have seen no evidence which refutes the Air Force’s and [Perry’s] . . . recommendation [to keep all five depots open],” Fazio said. “I not only ask the commission to leave McClellan off the final list, I’m asking for a recommendation . . . that McClellan’s workload be increased.”

Yet many knowledgeable observers fear that McClellan’s luck could run out this year.

The commission staff ranks McClellan and Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio as the least necessary bases.

The outlook for the Long Beach Naval Shipyard is also bleak. Two years ago, the Navy wanted to retain the 53-year-old base because of its capability to dry-dock aircraft carriers on the West Coast. But it survived the 1993 round by only a single vote.

This time around, the Navy says it no longer needs the shipyard, and the General Accounting Office, in a review of the Pentagon’s methodology, found no fault with the Navy’s reasoning.

Long Beach officials and shipyard workers beg to differ.

In the latest in a series of demonstrations, hundreds of shipyard supporters last week protested outside the facility’s gates.

“Hell, no, we won’t go,” the demonstrators chanted as a giant 47-by-80-foot American flag waved in the background.

Possibly working in Long Beach’s favor is a finding by the commission staff. Similar to the Air Force’s surplus in maintenance-oriented bases, the Navy has 37% more capacity to repair nuclear-powered submarines than it needs. The staff pointed out that closing Long Beach will do nothing to address that problem.

Left off the original closure list was the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard that, if closed, would reduce the excess nuclear capacity to 19%.

But the yard, located in Kittery, Me., employs many New Hampshire residents, and some saw another political connection. As the site of the first presidential primary, the reasoning went, Clinton would be loath to be blamed for a shuttered shipyard.

On a split vote, the commission decided in May to add the Portsmouth yard to the list.

In testimony before the commission last week, the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force strongly backed up their decisions to close Long Beach Naval Shipyard and keep McClellan Air Force Base open.

Navy Secretary John H. Dalton argued that the Portsmouth shipyard was the key servicing location for the Navy’s East Coast nuclear submarine fleet. The Long Beach yard, whose focus is on conventionally powered ships, no longer fits into the Navy’s future plans, which call for San Diego to become the hub of Navy activity on the West Coast.

The Air Force also forcefully asked the commission to spare McClellan, arguing that the closure of a single air logistics center would cause a $317-million shortfall in the service’s budget over the next five years.

“The closure of a depot would have dramatic adverse impact on our budget and draw essential funds from other top-priority programs,” said Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall.

The commission must send its recommendations to Clinton by July. The President must either approve the commission’s recommendations intact and send them to Congress, or reject them and return them to the commission.

If he sends them to Congress, the lawmakers have 45 legislative days to disapprove them without any changes.

In the past two rounds, the package of reductions has sailed through Congress with only perfunctory opposition.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Military Bases in Jeopardy

The Defense Department and the federal base-closing commission have recommended this year that nearly 30 California bases be closed or realigned. Under a plan to be finalized on Thursday, the state could lose as many as 30,000 military and civilian jobs. Shown on the map are some of the targeted sites.

Previous Job Losses

No state has lost more jobs than California in the three previous rounds of base closures. Starting in 1988, defense cutbacks have cost the state 22 bases, more than twice as many as any other state. Officials estimate that when these closures are completed, California will have lost mort than 200,000 jobs, directly and indirectly.

ROUND 1--1988

Totals: 13,505 military / 6,821 civilian

ROUND 2--1991

Totals: 36,180 military / 9,040 civilian

ROUND 3--1993

Totals: 28,870 military / 16,290 civilian

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Sierra Army Depot Herlong

Jobs at stake: 53 military / 539 civilian

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McClellan Air Force Base, Sacramento

Jobs at stake: 3,000 military / 10,600 civilian