Clinton Arrives for Weekend of Fund-Raisers

Arriving for a weekend whirlwind through California, President Clinton confirmed Saturday that he would sign the $268-billion defense authorization bill despite concerns that one of its provisions would hamstring efforts to transform McClellan Air Force Base into a privately run military subcontractor.

At the same time, he announced a series of steps aimed at easing the economic impact of shutting down the base as a military facility.

“We will continue to do everything we can to help McClellan make the transition,” Clinton said as rain pounded down at the air base, where he landed.

By Saturday evening, Clinton had shed his Northern California rain gear for dinner wear, dining at an Italian restaurant--the former site of the Malibu sheriff’s station--with political and Hollywood figures from Mayor Richard Riordan and former Cabinet official Henry Cisneros to Kevin Spacey, Tom Hanks, David Geffen and Barry Diller.

Earlier Saturday, the president took a soggy stroll through a sprawling wetlands project in Davis and starred at a fund-raiser in Sacramento before heading south for more events aimed at cutting the Democratic National Committee’s $15-million debt--a burden caused in large part by legal fees and other costs related to ongoing probes of the party’s past fund-raising practices.

His companion during part of the weekend was expected to be his daughter, Chelsea, who began her freshman year at Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Clinton had considered vetoing the defense authorization bill--which includes approval of military pay raises--because it imposes restrictions that California legislators contended will hinder McClellan’s privatization process. Texas legislators raised similar complaints on behalf of an Air Force base in San Antonio.

But Clinton, verifying earlier reports of his decision, said Saturday that he would sign the bill on the recommendation of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.

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McClellan and the Texas base were targeted for shutdowns in a 1995 report by the government’s Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Clinton accepted the report’s recommendations but attempted to save jobs linked to the bases by permitting the facilities to be run by private interests.

In writing this year’s defense authorization bill, however, Congress added language limiting the degree to which McClellan and the Texas base could compete against bases in Utah, Oklahoma and Georgia that the military will continue to operate.

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Among the steps outlined by Clinton to ease McClellan’s transition is that the Coast Guard will remain a McClellan tenant through at least 2004 and contribute $2 million a year for airfield operations after 1999.

Also, he said the Defense Department will retain the liability for shutting down McClellan’s nuclear reactor, allowing it to remain in use for 30 more years.

“Your efforts are a model for the nation,” Clinton said at McClellan, where a nearby billboard implored motorists: “Save Jobs at McClellan. Call President Clinton.”

Minutes later, Clinton’s motorcade zipped away to dedicate a 3,700-acre wildlife area in the Yolo Basin Wetlands southwest of Sacramento, a federal-state project Clinton also described as a model for the rest of the country.

Under the plan to engineer the marshy, flood-prone area into crucial habitat for wintering birds, the environmental group Ducks Unlimited offered expertise while the federal government committed about $12 million and the state provided about $5 million.

“You can’t imagine how much I wanted to get out of cold, wet, rainy, windy, Washington, D.C., to come to California,” Clinton said, drawing laughs from the small, rain- and wind-buffeted crowd on a soggy flood plain where ducks flapped their wings, and some onlookers used the bank of green porta potties as a windbreak.

“But, after all, this is a wetlands event,” he added.

Environmentalists have applauded the project, described as the largest of its kind west of the Everglades, in part because California has lost 90% of its wetlands to agriculture and development.

“A great deal of the history of 20th century California is a story of this battle” between development and the environment, Clinton said, contending that a proper balance was possible. “And the truth is, for most of the 20th century, not only in California, but throughout America,” people didn’t worry much about the environment.

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Nowadays, the president continued, “we understand that over the long run, if we want to preserve our ability to increase our standard of living, we have to preserve our national environment and all the things that go with it.”

The president waxed nostalgic, noting that “when I crossed that levee today, I thought I was back home in eastern Arkansas, and I kept waiting for somebody to give me my waders and a gun to go duck hunting.”

By highlighting the wetlands, Clinton was amplifying a goal stated recently by Vice President Al Gore who, on the 25th anniversary of the Clean Water Act in October, had called for a gain of 100,000 acres of wetlands by 2005.

In Los Angeles, Clinton planned to stay at the Malibu home of entertainment industry executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and attend two political events tonight, including a fund-raiser for the Democratic Party. In Las Vegas on Friday, Clinton helped raise more than $400,000 for the party committee at a fund-raiser. The fee for attending was $125; for $1,000, Clinton reportedly posed for a picture with the donor.