Long Beach Loses Shipyard, 3,000 Jobs in Panel Vote : Military: The 6-2 decision brings state’s job losses from this year’s closures to 23,000. Angry officials will ask President Clinton to reject all the recommendations.

Following an exhortation by its chairman to “bite the bullet,” the federal base closing commission voted 6 to 2 Friday to shut down the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, the last major remnant of the city’s rich naval past.

In another blow to the Southern California economy, the decision would throw 3,000 employees out of work at the shipyard and bring to 23,000 the number of jobs statewide that state officials estimate were lost in this year’s recommendations completed Friday night.

Friday’s decision also marked the end of two years of growing anxiety in Long Beach that the venerable Navy installation’s days were numbered.

“We are shocked and saddened,” said Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill afterward. “We fought a good fight. Now it’s time to counsel and aid the workers and families of the shipyard before we move forward to plan the future of the remarkable facility.”

Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) said he was “extremely disappointed” at the outcome and lashed out at commission Chairman Alan J. Dixon for goading the panel to act abruptly.

“I’m disgusted at the chairman’s obvious bias at trying to rush it,” said Horn. “I’m bothered by the way he handled the hearing.”

The commission kept up its steady pace and adjourned at 9:41 p.m. EDT, having considered 177 bases for possible closure.

Dixon, reacting to criticism that California suffered unjustly, said, “There was no intent to hurt California.”

Asked if “fat” remained in the armed services’ base structure, Dixon replied, “Quite a bit, quite a bit.”

Horn joined other angry California members of Congress in calling on President Clinton to reject the commission’s upcoming full report, containing the shipyard closure recommendation.

“We should throw this [set of recommendations] out,” Horn said.

But Dixon expressed confidence about the fate of the commission’s months of work. “I certainly do expect the President to accept [the report] and the Congress to approve it.”

At a Friday news conference, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she and other members want to set up a meeting with Clinton to urge him to reject the report. “We knew that there had to be checks and balances on a commission that went bonkers, and this commission went bonkers,” Boxer said.

The commission Friday methodically worked its way through a list of dozens of other bases during its second day of deliberations. Several more in California were closed, many of them smaller facilities that have modest impact on their host communities. But some involve hundreds of jobs.

The commission’s list goes to the President on July 1.

Clinton can reject the list and return it to the commission for changes. But in each of the past three closure rounds, the commission’s recommendations were approved without serious objection.

The midmorning shipyard vote on Friday was the most galvanizing moment of the day--perhaps of the entire proceeding.

Dixon said the Long Beach vote exemplified the difficult decisions facing the panel. “This is an unpleasant piece of business, and we should bite the bullet and do the things we don’t want to do. If we’re not saving any money, we shouldn’t be in business,” Dixon said in a booming voice.

“Nobody wants to spend more money on defense,” said Dixon, “but nobody wants to close their base.”

Commissioner Benjamin F. Montoya, a retired admiral, suggested a break for lunch before plunging into the divisive shipyard issue. But Dixon insisted on facing the issue without interruption.

Montoya urged that the yard be spared because of the thousands of jobs California has lost in other base closing decisions--notably Thursday’s vote to close McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and eliminate nearly 14,000 jobs.

The shipyard closing would come on top of an estimated 20,000 local jobs lost in the 1991 closure of the Navy station and the 1993 shutdown of the Navy hospital, both in Long Beach.

“One of our criteria [to spare a base] is [adverse] cumulative economic impact,” said Montoya. “Clearly, the closure of this shipyard does exactly that.”

But, unlike two years ago, the Navy no longer wants to keep the Long Beach facility open.

Then, as now, the Navy faced a problem of excess shipyard capacity, but at the time it wanted to retain the Long Beach yard. Despite the Navy’s backing in the 1993 round, the commission nearly killed it--sparing it by one vote. Since that time, the shipyard’s fate was considered extremely grim as it faced the final round of closure hearings.

The Navy argued that by closing shipyards in Guam and Long Beach, the service could reduce its excess capacity from 29% to 19%. Also, the Navy said it no longer needed the yard’s dry dock, which allows it to service large-hulled ships.

By shutting the Long Beach facility, the Navy opted to close a public shipyard in hopes that private yards in San Diego would be able to provide that service. The Navy wants to turn San Diego into its “super port” on the West Coast.

But on the East Coast, the Navy took the opposite tack. It wants to keep Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Me., open and let the private yards compete for business. Montoya found the Navy stance inconsistent.

“What if you have a labor dispute . . . or you’re not able to build the home port [in San Diego] . . . you have to do the work in Bremerton, Wash. [another Navy shipyard]. . . . That’s a very inconsistent argument.”

Horn accused the Navy of manipulating data to make the shipyard look bad.

“There is no question that they jiggered the figures. They stonewalled on the cost of closing the base,” said Horn, adding that even the General Accounting Office “had difficulty getting the number from them.”

Horn said the true cost of closing the base was $433 million, but the Navy said it would cost $74 million. The commission staff estimated the cost at $156 million.

But it was clearly one of the commission’s most agonizing votes.

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“This is a tough call,” said commissioner Josue Robles Jr., a retired Army general. “The economics are not compelling. But we didn’t create this economic hole . . . Congress did, by wanting a down payment on [military savings from the end of] the Cold War.”

Montoya and commissioner Rebecca Cox, the only California resident on the commission, voted to keep the shipyard open.

The Portsmouth shipyard escaped even being voted on. Because it was added to the closure list by the commission, no formal action was needed to keep it operating.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) accused the White House of manipulating the base closure process to save the Portsmouth base. “The vote . . . was preordained by the Clinton Administration when it allowed the Navy Department over the past two years to actively undermine the most cost-effective shipyard in the Navy by shifting work to less efficient repair facilities.”

Rohrabacher said the White House “meddled” in the Navy decision-making process to keep Portsmouth off the original Pentagon closure list because of the yard’s proximity to New Hampshire, site of the first presidential primary.

The Long Beach closure does not come as a complete loss to Rohrabacher’s district, however. The Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station will pick up about 51 military and 126 civilian jobs as a result of Friday’s ruling.

Though relieved, employees in Seal Beach also were saddened.

“We feel terrible for our friends in Long Beach,” said Richard Williamson, a spokesman for the facility. “It’s obviously devastating. . . . You either know people who are directly impacted or maybe you say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ ”

The commission also reaffirmed its 1991 and 1993 decisions to close the Marine Corps air Stations at El Toro and Tustin by 1999.

In what was largely a technical move, the bases were placed on the closure list to give the Navy flexibility in deciding where to relocate the Marine helicopters now stationed in Orange County.

The new receiving sites for the choppers will include air stations in Camp Pendleton, Miramar and North Island, Calif.; Oceana, Va.; Fallon, Nev.; New River, N.C. and Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Santa Ana’s Naval Reserve Center also ended up on the chopping block. It is to close within six years, resulting in a loss of 12 military and two civilian jobs.

Here is a partial list of commission actions affecting other California military facilities:

* Naval Training Centers, San Diego: Amends a 1993 closure decision to give the Navy flexibility in the location of the command.

* Supervisors of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair, Long Beach: Closed. Nineteen-person function attached to Long Beach shipyard moves to San Diego.

* Naval Personnel Research and Development Center, San Diego: Closed.

* Naval Health Research Center, San Diego: Kept open.

* Naval Warfare Assessment Division, Corona: Kept open.

* Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center In-Service Engineering West Coast Division, San Diego: Closed, some functions move to Navy facilities in Point Loma, Calif.

* Naval Recruiting District, San Diego: Changes a 1993 base closure decision by relocating functions to a preferable location in San Diego.

* Naval Reserve Center, Pomona: Closed.

* Naval Reserve Center, Santa Ana: Closed.

* Naval Reserve Center, Stockton: Closed.

* Engineering Field Activity West, San Bruno: Kept open.

* Fort Hunter Liggett, Salinas: Realignment of personnel.

* Sierra Army Depot, Herlong: Realignment of personnel.

* Oakland Army Base: Closed.

Times staff writer J.R. Moehringer and Peter Roberson of States News Service contributed to this story.