Commission Appears Certain to Add More State Bases to Closure List : Defense: Long Beach shipyard and Miramar seem the likeliest additions. Action would give the panel a larger pool to work with.

WASHINGTON — When the military base-closing process reaches a critical juncture next week, more California bases will almost certainly be placed on the list of facilities threatened with closure--including the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission is scheduled to vote Friday on additions to the Pentagon’s list of recommended shutdowns. According to a commission source, the Naval Aviation Depot at North Island and the Miramar Naval Air Station, both in San Diego County, will probably be added to the list.

The additions, if approved by the panel, would give the commission a larger pool of bases to compare in deciding which to close and would try to address concerns that the Pentagon’s choices were ill-conceived.

The commission has targeted 10 major bases in the state for possible closure, including the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County.

Although nerve-racking, being voted onto the list at next week’s hearing will not necessarily lead to closure. In a similar process two years ago, the commission added 35 bases to its list but closed none of them.

The panel’s actions will be shaped by testimony commissioners heard during three weeks of regional hearings, including three days in Oakland and San Diego last month.

State and federal officials from California argued strenuously at those hearings that bases in other states should be added to the list so that the commission could make more detailed comparisons. The flip side of that argument is that more California bases are likely to be added as well.

The Naval Aviation Depot at North Island may be added as the commission ponders questions about the berthing of West Coast nuclear carriers, the source said. Alameda Naval Air Station, which the commission is weighing for closure, can berth three of the giant nuclear ships. If Alameda is closed, the carriers would have to change their home port to Everett, Wash., or San Diego.

In order to consider West Coast naval shipyard capacity in its entirety, the commission is inclined, said the source, to add the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., to the list.

The Long Beach facility was added at this stage of the process in 1991 but was left off the final closure list.

Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the Bay Area was on the Pentagon’s closure list released in mid-March.

During the regional hearing in San Diego last month, questions were raised about the feasibility of closing the El Toro air station and shifting its personnel to Miramar. The commission has asked the Navy for alternative scenarios--keeping El Toro open and closing Miramar is one of those, the source said.

The Tustin Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County, closed two years ago by the commission, would be revived under another scenario the Navy has been asked to devise. But commission lawyers are wrestling with legal questions over adding a base that has been shut down by a previous commission.

The Naval Station in Everett is almost certain to be added to the list as a possible alternative to closing Alameda Naval Air Station, the source said.

Defenders of Alameda, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland), argued that closing the Bay Area facility would cost the Navy many times more than the $169 million it says it will save. Dellums and others testified that it will cost nearly $1 billion to outfit the naval base in Everett.

Defenders of McClellan Air Force Base, an air logistics center near Sacramento that is also on the list, have urged that four similar aircraft maintenance depots in Utah, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia be added to rebut Air Force claims that McClellan rates as the weakest of the five.

The commission may add as many as three of the aircraft maintenance depots, sources indicated.

If the out-of-state bases go on the list, “it would be an accomplishment (for California),” said Tom Houston, chief spokesman for the commission. But he cautioned that the commissioners add bases “to broaden their context” for its final decision-making later in the summer. The commission will visit any bases added to the list Friday, Houston said.

To add a base, at least four of the panel’s members must be present, and a majority vote is required.

The commission is not expected to delete any facilities from the list next week. Those decisions will be made during a hearing scheduled for June 26, Houston said.

By law, the commission must make its additions by June 1 and send its final set of recommendations to President Clinton by July 1.

In addition, sources said, the commission may add shipyards in Norfolk, Va., and Portsmouth, N.H.; naval aviation depots in Jacksonville, Fla., and Cherry Point, N.C; a submarine base in New London, Conn., and naval stations in Pascagoula, Miss., and Ingleside, Tex.

Other installations may also be added to the list.

Most observers of the hearing process regard the California strategy--a mixture of pleading economic hardship and assailing Pentagon decision-making on technical grounds--as having been generally effective.

The commission was bombarded by similar arguments during regional hearings around the country, but California’s anemic economy and particularly spirited defenses of three bases--all in Northern California--have inspired modest optimism over the outcome of this year’s round of closings.

A source in Gov. Pete Wilson’s office who focuses on the base-closing issue hopes “to salvage a couple” of bases and said the state would do “very well” by saving two or three.

The source termed the Alameda Naval Air Station and the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey as winnable or potentially winnable. McClellan Air Force Base was rated by the aide as “potentially winnable--or delayable.”

Defenders of the Defense Language Institute, housed at the Presidio in Monterey, mounted a persuasive case based largely on the institute’s uniqueness. Witnesses said the institute provides 10% of the nation’s post-secondary foreign language instruction, much of it not offered elsewhere. Contracting out such work to colleges, they said, would take longer and be less proficient.

Supporters of the McClellan base argue that decisions about reducing the number of aircraft maintenance depots should include similar facilities in other branches of the armed forces. This notion of “interservicing” is supported by most commission members.

Tim Ransdell, director of research for the bipartisan California Institute in Washington, was impressed by the California presentations made before the commission.

“If any bases come off, I think there is a very good chance they will be from California,” Ransdell said.