California seen as target-rich environment for base closures

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State seen as target-rich environment for base closures

By MARK WALKER Staff Writer
30 April 2005

In military speak, California presents a target-rich environment for Defense Department planners putting the finishing touches on a list of bases that have outlived their usefulness.

The commission that will decide which bases should be closed has got plenty to consider in this county, home to eight of the state's 33 major bases and numerous smaller installations that dot the landscape from San Diego Bay to Oceanside. Whether any of those here are deemed no longer vital to the nation's defense will be known in two weeks when the Pentagon releases its list of which facilities it believes should be closed. The county's military infrastructure has been largely spared in the four previous rounds of base closures that the Pentagon says have saved the nation $28.9 billion. State and local officials are poised to fight for any of their bases that appear on the closure list, armed with a stockpile of arguments and lobbyists.

"The communities have done a good job in building the case for their military facilities, but it is unrealistic to think we are going to escape cuts entirely," said James Spagnole, who heads up Office of Military and Aerospace Support in the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. "California has more bases and facilities than any other state."

"We've done our homework and now we're just sitting on the edge of our seat waiting for the list."

Money, jobs at risk

At stake here in San Diego County is an estimated $18 billion in direct and indirect military spending as well as the jobs of more than 130,000 active duty military personnel and civilians. That's nearly half of what the state says is California's annual $39 billion in defense spending that employs an estimated 279,000 civilians and active duty and reserve members of the military.

Considered at risk by those working on their behalf are the Marine Corps Recruit Depot adjacent to Lindbergh Field, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station (property coveted by developers and considered a candidate for a new regional airport), the North Island Aviation Depot and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. The center has a facility at Point Loma Naval Air Station and one in Old Town in San Diego.

Riverside County's March Reserve Air Base, also a potential home for a new civilian airport for the region, is, too, seen by some as a candidate for shuttering. Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps' crown jewel among it bases, is probably safe, although it may have to make room for other Marine facilities that may be closed.

Anxious time

On the eve of the publication of the Pentagon list, anxiety is building in the halls of Congress, where members fear job losses from a close-down in their districts will hurt them at the polls.

Also waiting for that document are the newly established Arlington, Va., offices of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission headed by Rancho Santa Fe resident Anthony Principi, who served as secretary of Veterans Affairs during President Bush's first term.

In a telephone interview Thursday with the North County Times from the commission's headquarters, Principi said the commission was charged with helping establish a national defense framework to serve the country for the next 20 years. He vowed to keep politics out of that process as much as possible.

"I will do everything I can to ensure we are objective and independent check on what the secretary of defense proposes," Principi said, adding he has "enormous respect" for the local military presence.

"The San Diego military community has served our nation well," he said. "We will look at these decisions very, very carefully and ensure that first and foremost our national security needs are met. We also be very mindful of the economic impact on communities such as San Diego that have contributed mightily to our defense."

Principi has hired Charlie Battaglia as the commission's chief of staff. The former Senate Veterans Affairs and Intelligence committees staff director was busy last week hiring about 80 people to assist the commission with its work, which begins within days of the Pentagon's recommended closure list.

"We will have hearings with the Secretary of Defense the week of May 16th," Battaglia said. "Each of the services will come up and testify as to why they believe the facilities they are recommending for closure are on the list."

Following those hearings, the commission staff will conduct its own analysis of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's list and then will schedule more than a dozen hearings around the country in communities where bases have been recommended for closure.

Rumsfeld has said that he believes up to a quarter of the nation's bases could be closed, and he directed the brass to look for opportunities for joint use facilities where, for example, planes belonging the Air Force, Army or Navy could be serviced at one maintenance facility rather than three separate sites.

Airport issue looms overhead

The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. is heading up the local lobbying effort to keep bases off the closure list. The business recruitment and retention agency is spending more than $400,000 in that effort. The corporation is paying William Cassidy Jr., a former assistant secretary of the Navy, to work the halls of the Pentagon and Congress.

The county also has a lot of congressional clout to wield. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, heads the House Armed Services Committee and has vowed to fight any effort to close Miramar or convert it to a joint use facility so it can serve as a new regional airport.

So too have Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, and Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido.

Cunningham spokesman Mark Olson said his boss and the rest of the county's congressional delegation are poised to strongly defend any local facility that appears on the Pentagon's closure list.

"We're all just looking to support all of our bases and doing the best we can to make sure none of them get closed down," Olson said.

Hovering over the issue here is the ongoing search by the San Diego County Airport Authority, which is charged with coming up with a recommendation for a new regional airport in time for a November 2006 ballot issue.

The authority has five military sites on its list ---- two at Miramar, March Air Reserve Base, Camp Pendleton and North Island Naval Air Station. But the authority has been forced by state and federal lawmakers to refrain from pursuing any of those sites, regardless of whether one is on the closure list, until the Principi commission completes its work at year's end.

Authority members have said they believed that their self-imposed muzzle won't prevent full consideration of the military sites once the closure process is complete. But the time to fully evaluate and publicly discuss those sites will be short. The authority has said it wants a recommendation for a new regional airport, or expansion of Lindbergh Field, in place by April of next year, four months after the base closure process ends.

Some defense observers have said that Miramar, the former Navy base handed to the Marines in the mid-1990s, was too expensive and didn't fit with the plans for the Marine Corps' air wings.

The recruit depot is one of two used by the Marines, the other being Parris Island in South Carolina. The 506 acres occupied by the San Diego depot could serve as a second runway for Lindbergh Field, the nation's busiest single-runway airport that is projected to be out of room to handle increases in cargo and passenger demand in about 15 years.

Closing bases, politics

Principi and the closure commission will have less leeway to change the Pentagon's recommendations than did predecessor commissions of 1988, '91, '93 and '95.

California saw 29 major installations closed during those rounds, none in San Diego County. The previous commission decisions resulted in the closure of 495 installations, including 97 bases nationwide.

This year's commission may be more insulated from politics as a result of a 2003 Senate vote that makes it harder to alter the Pentagon's list. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as it weighed his nomination to chair the commission, Principi said he would not be influenced by politics, despite his close ties to the Bush administration and local military interests.

"As chairman, I believe it is important to set the tone for our deliberations ---- to ensure that our work is devoid of politics, to address potential conflicts of interest, to be independent, fair, open and equitable to build consensus to ensure the communities and people impacted by the process have an opportunity to be heard."

Principi also noted that it will be difficult to change what the Pentagon recommends when its list is published on either May 13 or 16.

"Changes in the statute make it more challenging to change a recommendation," Principi, a former Naval officer and Senate staffer, told the committee.

Spagnole, the state's point man on the closure issue, said the past rounds of base closures were "free-for-alls" as politicians and communities clamored to save bases and installations recommended for closure, in several instances winning the battle.

"There were abuses in the past, but in this round there are some definite procedures against that which should enable the arguments to made solely on the basis of merit," he said.

That doesn't mean that appeals won't be successful if branches of the service, lawmakers and communities can demonstrate the Pentagon reasoning for a particular site to be closed was based on faulty information. But it will be an uphill battle. About 78 percent of the Pentagon's previous recommendations were ultimately upheld.

'Not easily swayed'

Arguments supportive of California's military facilities were laid out in a treatise published last month by the governor's Council on Base Support and Retention.

Co-chaired by former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, the council contended that the state was vital to the nation's national security because of its "strategic location for projecting power into and across the Pacific and into space."

Spagnole, the state's point man on base closure, said California bases would be the ones to respond if trouble arose in China or North Korea. Closure commission Chairman Principi is well aware of those scenarios, said Spagnole, who worked with Principi in Washington in the 1990s.

"Tony is not a guy who will be easily swayed," he said. "If there are arguments to close a facility based on wrong data and false assumptions, we are confident the chairman will highlight that. He and Phil Coyle (the other Californian on the commission) are very experienced Washington hands and both have an extremely high level of knowledge of California's inherent values to the military."

Local bases

San Diego County has a strong concentration of military bases, including:

Camp Pendleton and Naval Weapons Station Fallbrook: 195,925 acres combined. Home to about 40,000 active duty and 26,000 reservists. Combined military and civilian work force of about 56,000.

Miramar Marine Corps Air Station: 22,941 acres with about 9,100 people, mostly military serving in the Third Marine Air Wing. About $1 billion has been invested in the base since the corps assumed it from the Navy in the 1990s.

Marine Corps Recruit Depot: 506 acres in downtown San Diego. Home to about 1,725 Marines and sailors and a civilian work force of about 900. The depot trains about 16,000 Marine recruits each year.

Naval Station San Diego: 1,497-acre berthing facility for more than 40 Pacific Fleet Surface ships with 19 deep-water piers and 49 different commands. Employs about 7,000 shipyard workers in its overall civilian and military work force of about 48,000 people.

North Island Naval Air Station: 48,786-acre facility home to three aircraft carriers, all Pacific Fleet antisubmarine helicopters and deep water research vessels. Located on Coronado Island and employs about 18,000 mostly civilian workers

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: 1,095 acres serving as operational and training center for used by Marines and Navy. Home to about 5,000 military personnel and 500 civilian workers.

Naval Base Point Loma: 1,711 acres serving as berthing center and living quarters for submarine personnel. Employs about 5,500 military and civilian workers.

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command and Systems Center: Two related commands occupying about 2,850 acres in San Diego working on information and space technology systems. Employs about 3,650 people combined.

*Source: California Council on Base Support and Retention

Names behind the headlines

Members of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, the fifth version of the panel that has overseen base closures nationwide since 1988:

Anthony Principi, Rancho Santa Fe resident and former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Philip Coyle, Los Angeles resident and former Pentagon director of testing and evaluation James Bilbray, former Nevada U.S. Representative Harold W. Gehman Jr., retired Navy admiral and former NATO Allied commander James Hill, retired Army general James Hansen, former Representative from Utah Claude Kicklighter, retired Army lieutenant and former assistant Veterans Affairs secretary Samuel Skinner, former head of the Transportation Department. Sue Ellen Turner, retired Air Force general

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com 
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Contributed, YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)