D.C. Trip Seeks to Lure Navy Jobs to County

Closing ranks behind local Navy bases, a 10-member delegation of Ventura County politicians and business leaders plans to jet off to Washington this weekend for a three-day lobbying blitz on the White House, Congress and the Pentagon.

The group, led by Supervisors John K. Flynn and Frank Schillo and the mayors of Oxnard, Ventura and Port Hueneme, has arranged an ambitious schedule of meetings next week to try to lure more jobs to the Point Mugu and Port Hueneme bases.

The Community-Navy Action Partnership, as the group is called, recently emerged from the countywide task formed to protect the county’s 17,900 Navy jobs from the round of base closures ordered earlier this year. Task force members made a similar trek to Washington last December.

Although both bases survived the base-closing procedure, Point Mugu officials expect to come under scrutiny again by three ongoing federal studies on how to consolidate weapons test centers operated by the Army, Air Force and Navy.

“We are still under threat,” Flynn told his fellow supervisors on Tuesday. The community, he said, must remain as diligent in protecting the county’s largest employer as it was during the last round of base closures.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed on Tuesday to donate $5,000 to the effort and rehire Washington lobbyist Lynn Jacquez to look out for the community’s interests.

The supervisors approved a $5,000-a-month lobbying contract, with the money to be paid only if the Community-Navy Action Partnership is successful in its fund-raising efforts.

So far, the group has raised about $6,000 from business and utility companies, said partnership coordinator Bill Simmons. Fund-raising, he said, will begin anew after the New Year.

The renewed lobbying effort has growing support, even from government watchdogs who complain about tax-subsidized efforts.

“The rate of return is fantastic,” said Michael L. Saliba, executive director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. “This is what the county should be doing.”

Saliba said he realized the Navy’s economic importance in Ventura County during the base-closing scare earlier this year. If either of the bases were to close, he said, the economic shock would devastate property values as well as cripple the local economy.

Local Navy supporters have kicked into high gear, responding to a call for help from managers at Point Mugu. Base employees have begun assembling answers to the anticipated waves of questions from Pentagon analysts about various consolidation scenarios.

The studies are expected to pit Point Mugu against its usual rivals, especially Elgin Air Force Base in Florida. Other bases that do similar work are Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, and Navy bases at China Lake and at Patuxent River, Md.

Military experts agree that the United States has too many bases that test missiles and other weaponry. And they agree that some sort of consolidation is inevitable with the shrinking defense budget, even merging Navy bases with those operated by the Army or Air Force.

But there is little agreement on which bases should be shut down.

The three studies have been ordered by Congress, the Pentagon and the White House. The results are expected by this spring, so lobbyists have suggested that now is the time to win friends and influence people in the nation’s capital.

“We feel that it would be very beneficial for a delegation to very strongly and very vociferously make the point to bring more work to Ventura County,” Jacquez told the partnership members at a strategy session Tuesday.

In its pitch to Washington officials, the delegation will try to actively recruit work for the bases, rather than just defend their importance to the nation’s military.

The delegates plan to press for the 100 jobs promised to the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Port Hueneme from a Navy facility ordered closed in Louisville, Ky. They will try to firm up those jobs from another base closure in Indianapolis that were supposed to go the Point Mugu and its sister base in China Lake.

Furthermore, the group will seek support on Capitol Hill for military construction dollars to fix up the deep-water Port of Hueneme so it could become the home port of an Aegis cruiser. Navy officials at Port Hueneme have begun a quiet campaign to persuade the U.S. fleet to dedicate one or more of the massive ships to the port for testing weapons.

Delegation members also plan to meet with Federal Aviation Administration officials to show strong business and political support behind the Navy’s proposal to fly jets at a low level toward a Navy building on Silver Strand Beach.

The flights are designed to simulate a ship combat scenario to test radar and various weapons. But neighbors have raised safety, environmental and noise concerns that have slowed the FAA’s final approval of the operation.

“It is just a small group making a a lot of noise,” Flynn said of the neighborhood opponents. “We want to be very clear that this project has a lot of community support.”

Meanwhile, Navy officials have two Lear jets at Point Mugu and are considering a demonstration, possibly unannounced, in the next week or so to show that the flights pose no safety risk or noise problem for the neighborhood.

In addition to Flynn, Schillo and Simmons, the delegation includes Oxnard Mayor Manny Lopez, Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom, Port Hueneme Mayor Toni Young, Mario J. de los Cobos, regional manager for the Gas Co., and defense industry executives Ted Rains, Richard Head and Calvin M. Carrera.

Brian Miller, the district representative for Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), will accompany the delegation.