Pentagon Crafting Plan to Save Jobs at McClellan Base : Military: Clinton Administration and closure panel work on a deal to turn Sacramento depot over to private firm. But change could threaten integrity of commission.

The Clinton Administration is considering a plan to save about half the 11,000 jobs that would be lost by the closing of McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento by turning the military depot there over to a private company and guaranteeing it billions of dollars of maintenance work each year.

The proposal, worked out during weekend discussions between the Pentagon and the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which ordered McClellan shut down, still has not been approved either by President Clinton or by Defense Secretary William J. Perry, Administration officials said Monday.

However, officials said that both Perry and the White House have been kept fully apprised of the plan, and the Defense Department and the base-closing commission are close to an agreement on the details. Clinton himself is expected to decide the issue sometime this week.

The proposal is designed to solve a thorny problem for the President: How to avoid angering California voters a year before the 1996 presidential election yet shut down the bases that the Pentagon needs closed to save money and preserve the integrity of the base-closing procedure.

The eight-member nonpartisan commission recommended the shutdown of McClellan last month along with dozens of other military installations as part of its 1995 round of shutdowns. California was especially hit hard, with Long Beach Naval Shipyard also on the list.

Under the law, Clinton has 15 days to decide whether to accept the panel’s recommendations intact or reject them and send them back to the commission, either turning them down as a bloc or recommending specific proposals for changing them.

Amid reports that the White House was looking for a compromise, Republicans already have begun criticizing the President for violating the integrity of the base-closing process, which was set up to shield it from political influence.

In previous rounds of base closings--in 1988, 1991 and 1993--presidents and members of Congress have simply accepted the panel’s recommendations intact. If Clinton were to reject this one, even with only minor suggestions for changes, he would be the first chief executive to do so.

The plan being worked out by the Pentagon and the commission would be similar to the prescription that the panel recommended last month for effectively closing Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio: shutting the base down as a federal installation and turning the work over to private firms.

Administration officials said such a move at McClellan would be in line with current Pentagon plans to farm out much of the maintenance work now performed by military depots to private contractors--much as is being done for other government enterprises--on grounds that it would be less costly.

The commission’s original proposal, unveiled a week ago, would close McClellan’s depot entirely and move the responsibilities for communications and electronics maintenance to the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, a step that would cost the Sacramento area some 11,000 base jobs.

The Administration is expected to argue, however, that any such savings would be eroded by the cost of moving thousands of engineers and other highly skilled workers to Tobyhanna and that it would be cheaper to transfer the base to a private firm that then could use the workers in Sacramento.

Although the numbers are preliminary, some Administration officials estimate that if the plan is carried out intact, it could “save” between 5,200 and 6,300 of the 11,000 jobs that would be lost to California if the depot work were moved to Pennsylvania.

However, they cautioned that many key details of the plan still have not been worked out and that it still is only an option, albeit the best one they have on the table so far. They said Perry is expected to decide formally whether to recommend the plan in a couple of days.

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Both the Pentagon and the base-closing commission declined to comment on the report. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said the department was only just completing its analysis of the base-closing commission’s report and would submit its recommendations to the President “soon.”

The Administration presumably would do nothing to prevent the closing of Long Beach Naval Shipyard or any of the other California installations on the commission’s list. The Pentagon did not recommend closing McClellan, but it did propose shutting down the shipyard.

Much of the maintenance work now being done at McClellan involves the repair and upkeep of sophisticated radar and satellite sensors and requires a highly skilled work force. The military needs such depots but also is under pressure to cut its infrastructure to save money.

The Air Force had been urged for months to propose closing at least three of the five depots it now has in operation but opted instead for a more gradual approach that would have allowed them to remain open with reduced workloads. The commission rejected that plan.

Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, along with other California lawmakers, sent Clinton a letter saying that this round of base closings, on top of previous closures, “will have a devastating effect on California’s already fragile economy.”

The letter noted that in the first three rounds, 22 major bases in the state were scheduled for closure or realignment, more than double the number in any other state.

The latest round, which targets McClellan, the Long Beach shipyard and Oakland Army Base, among others, would result in direct losses of 7,900 military and 19,000 civilian jobs, the letter said.