Job-Saving Plan for McClellan Base Hits Snags

The Clinton Administration has run into some serious snags in its efforts to devise a plan to save some of the 11,000 jobs that otherwise might be lost with the proposed shutdown of McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento.

Less than a week after floating a plan to keep some of the jobs intact by “privatizing” the sprawling aircraft maintenance depot, the Administration is facing grumbling--or outright opposition--from virtually all sides. Among the objections:

* Members of the federal base-closing commission, whose approval would be needed under the initial version of the plan, have raised doubts about whether the proposal is necessary--or even workable--and hinted they may not go along.

* California’s top elected officials have labeled the idea inadequate, contending that the only effective way to ease the economic pain in California would be to reject the commission’s closure recommendation entirely.

* Republicans have begun charging that the President is politicizing the independent base-closing process, which was designed to be insulated from political pressures.

The President and his top advisers appear to be mired in the issue, unable to come to a firm decision despite almost daily meetings last week. Many critical details of the plan remain unresolved.

After a 90-minute meeting between Clinton and his top advisers Saturday, officials said the President was still seeking more information about available options, and was unlikely to make a decision until early next week. Those at the session included White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, Defense Secretary William J. Perry, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Aides said the President had asked for more information on an array of issues, from the prospects of privatization to the cumulative economic impact of recent base closings in California.

However, they insisted that all options were still open, including simply accepting the base-closing commission’s recommendations intact and allowing McClellan to shut down, a move that would send some of its jobs to Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania.

White House officials said the President appears to be searching for some sort of middle ground between outright rejection of the recommendations of the Base Closure and Realignment Commission and full acceptance of its proposal.

“There are many degrees in between,” a White House aide said Saturday.

However, outside analysts cautioned that the President’s options are extremely limited. Under the law, he must either accept the panel’s recommendations intact or send the entire plan back for reworking.

If Clinton were to challenge the decision of the commission--which recommended closing McClellan and dozens of other bases--he would be the first President to do so since the panel came into being in the aftermath of the Cold War.

As the discussions continue, officials said the Administration has lowered its estimate of how many jobs would be saved by the plan--to only 4,000, down from 5,000 to 6,300 projected earlier this week.

Some members of the base-closing commission have insisted privately that the Administration’s estimates are too high, contending that the White House plan would save about 800 jobs at most.

But senior Administration officials asserted Saturday that such speculation is way off the mark. They said detailed analyses by the Defense Department had confirmed that the estimate of 4,000 jobs saved was a solid one.

There also appeared to be increasing dissatisfaction among White House staffers that the Pentagon had not been able to come up with a military justification for keeping McClellan open, as some Clinton aides had expected.

The Pentagon has been unable to do so because the Air Force currently has so much excess capacity among its five maintenance depots across the country that it cannot justify keeping them all open.

The Air Force initially had hoped to keep all five depots operating with a reduced workload, but the commission rejected that plan as inefficient and ordered McClellan and Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio closed.

Under a scheme devised by the Pentagon, the Defense Department would close McClellan as an Air Force base and sell the installation’s maintenance facilities to one or more private contractors.

The Pentagon would then rechannel some of the maintenance and repair work now being done at McClellan to these private firms, which presumably would rehire some of the technicians who would be laid off when McClellan closed.

The Defense Department already has been toying with privatizing much of the military’s maintenance and repair work anyway, and the move Clinton is considering would involve speeding up the execution of that plan.

Administration officials said Saturday that Clinton was considering employing a similar plan to help ease the economic pain in San Antonio when Kelly AFB is closed.

On Wednesday, some members of the base-closing commission began hinting privately that the panel might not rubber-stamp the Pentagon’s plan, which asks commissioners to give their blessing to the privatization scheme.

And on Saturday, officials conceded that the Administration still has not worked out such critical questions as whether commission approval would be required and how many private contracts would be involved.

As a result, the effort appears to be in disarray. Although Perry had been expected to formally recommend the plan late last week, he still has not done so and is unlikely to act until the White House is satisfied.

White House political operatives have been pressing for a solution that would avoid angering California voters just ahead of the 1996 presidential election. California has 54 electoral votes, the most of any state.

At the same time, however, Clinton has been wary of intervening in the base-closing process, which was set up by Congress to protect the procedure from just that kind of political influence.