THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 11, 1995 TAG: 9507110288
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Whether California can save jobs while the Pentagon saves money is the key to President Clinton's decision on accepting a military base closure list, the president's top staff aide said Monday.
White House chief of staff Leon Panetta told reporters that Clinton wants more information before he decides whether to accept or reject a base closure commission proposal that hits California hard. The decision could figure in how Clinton fares in his re-election bid next year in the nation's most populous state.
The pressure was on Monday as California's two senators and several House members met with Panetta at the Capitol to make their final appeal to the administration to spare the state another round of military base closings.
Panetta, himself a former California congressman, said the president knows that while California represents 15 percent of the jobs at military bases, it is suffering more than half the total job loss as a result of base closings.
Among the California installations on the commission's closure list are McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, the Oakland Army Base, and the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. Combined they represent nearly 20,000 jobs.
The focus is on McClellan, one of the two Air Force maintenance depots recommended for shutdown by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. McClellan's closing would mean the loss of about 11,000 military and civilian jobs, according to the panel. Some administration officials argue that about half those jobs could be saved if a private employer took over the aircraft engine and airframe maintenance work at the base.
Panetta said Clinton is seeking more information from his staff on how privatization would work at McClellan and the other depot targeted for closure, Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
The issue presents the administration with a touchy political problem. With its 54 electoral votes, California is the largest electoral prize in next year's presidential election. The state has already lost tens of thousands of jobs due to base closings and cutbacks in defense contracting.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said privatizing McClellan won't solve Clinton's problem. Feinstein said the military would still have to pay the costs of operating the airfield at the base; otherwise there would be no way to get planes in for repairs. And Boxer said Panetta and other administration officials have been unable to guarantee that privatization would save even a single job in California.
Clinton also is under pressure from Republican leaders who contend that rejecting the base closure list would introduce politics into a basic military decision.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who helped conceive the idea of a base closing commission, told reporters Monday that rejecting the shutdown list to improve re-election chances would be ``a terrible political blemish'' on a process that has been relatively free of politics.
Panetta rejected the charge.
``In the end it is a substantive (decision) in terms of the interests of this country and that's what the president is going to consider,'' Panetta said.
Clinton must decide whether to accept the list by Saturday. If he accepts it, Congress then would have to accept or reject it without change.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSURE BRAC by CNB