Clinton Expected to Accept Closure Panel’s List Today : Bases: Agreement with Defense Department calls for about one-third of the jobs at McClellan, near Sacramento, to be turned over to private firms.

President Clinton is expected to end two weeks of public negotiation with his own Defense Department today by accepting the recommendations of the independent base closure commission to shut 79 military installations, including McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento.

Before agreeing to accept the panel’s list, Clinton sought and received assurance from the Pentagon that at least some of the aircraft maintenance jobs at McClellan in politically pivotal California would be salvaged. McClellan employs 11,000 workers.

Under the plan agreed to by the White House, the Pentagon and the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, McClellan would wind down over a period of five years and about one-third of the jobs there would be turned over to private firms.

The other large Air Force maintenance depot slated for closure--Kelly Air Force Base in Texas--also would transfer some of its functions to local businesses.

Clinton is expected to stress these “privatization” efforts in a statement to be issued today approving the commission’s list of bases to be closed.

He will forward the list to Congress, which has until Aug. 15 to accept or reject the commission’s recommendations in their entirety.

Clinton will claim to have averted some of the threatened job losses, allowing him to save political face after two weeks of public agony and indecision in which he has been assailed alternately for insensitivity to California’s economy and for injecting politics into a nominally nonpartisan enterprise.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Tuesday that Clinton was working on the statement and a letter to be sent to lawmakers, some of whom have complained bitterly that the commission’s list, which also includes the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, hurts California disproportionately.

Other members of Congress have accused Clinton of tainting with political considerations a process designed to insulate the commission from lobbying by elected officials or the Administration.

Clinton considered rejecting the commission’s list because of its impact on California, but instead accepted its word that many of the jobs at McClellan could be transferred to the private sector.

If Clinton were to reject the bipartisan panel’s list, it would be the first time that a President had done so in four rounds of base closings starting in 1988.

Commission Chairman Alan J. Dixon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois, sent the Administration a letter over the weekend asserting that the Defense Department has “full authority” to turn many of the jobs at McClellan and Kelly over to private contractors.

McCurry said Dixon’s letter--which merely states what is already implicit in the panel’s report--was “very helpful” and was decisive in moving Clinton to accept the commission’s recommendations.

One unanswered question is whether the maintenance work performed at McClellan would be parceled out to firms in the Sacramento area, or a single large contractor would be brought in essentially to “buy” the sprawling depot and operate it on a smaller scale.

The Pentagon proposal amounts to a speedup of a plan proposed by Defense Secretary William J. Perry to gradually turn over more of the military’s maintenance and repair work to private interests during the next several years, in part to free up the shrinking active duty force for war-fighting missions.

Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this story.