THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501160065
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Base Closings
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
In Pensacola, Fla., the local business and political establishment got state help to hire consultants and finance a glossy brochure touting the value of the area's four military installations.
In El Centro, Calif., a three-member committee spent weeks poring over statistical tables, then correcting what it called inaccuracies in Navy research on the local Naval Air Facility.
In Hampton Roads, an array of government and business groups formed committees, made lobbying trips to the Pentagon, and distributed a video and a research paper on what they call the local Navy, Army and Air Force ``megabase.''
In dozens of communities nationwide this winter, a defense buildup is under way as a new round of military base closings begins. Thousands of civilian and uniformed defense workers will lose their jobs once the ax starts to fall, but for now the process is creating employment for a growing cadre of lawyers and public relations consultants.
Caught napping when the Pentagon moved in 1993 to shut or realign more than 150 military installations, localities are mobilizing to head off more closures this year. They are lobbying defense officials, enlisting help from retired military brass, looking for any edge they can get to influence the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.
``For communities, there's a lot at stake,'' observed Matt Berman, who was staff director for the 1993 base closing commission. Now in a Washington law firm, Berman is representing communities trying to preserve bases. It's a growing field for lawyers, he acknowledged.
Berman's competitors include Barry Steinberg, a Northern Virginia-based lawyer who represented Charleston, S.C., in the 1993 base-closing round and is working for Hampton Roads this year, and the Harris Group, a consulting firm retained by Pensacola.
Berman's background as a commission staff member has helped attract clients, he said. It probably hasn't hurt that former New Jersey Rep. Jim Courter, who headed the base closing commission in 1991 and '93, and Harry C. MacPherson Jr., a member of the '93 commission, are in the same firm. Berman said, though, that neither is doing commission-related work.
Only one 1995 commission member, Chairman Alan J. Dixon, has been formally selected and confirmed by the Senate. But the staff people who will serve the eight-member panel, already ensconced in an office tower near the Pentagon, are playing host to a steady stream of local and state representatives.
They give visitors briefings on the base-closure process and in return get presentations on hometown bases. Fact sheets, briefing booklets, promotional videos and other items left by the delegations fill several shelves in the commission office's library and additional material arrives almost daily.
Jimmie Taylor, a retired Navy rear admiral now with the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce, is among those who've called on the staff. He or someone else involved in the chamber's base-saving effort has been coming to Washington about once a month, always bringing along new information about local bases or calling on new and potential players in the process.
He's not at all certain the effort will be effective, Taylor conceded, but he's cheerfully optimistic.
``If you know that there's one chance that you can make a difference, I think you would be foolish not to do anything,'' he said.
Taylor said Pensacola authorities have a $400,000 budget for their base-preservation efforts, but he hopes to do the job for half that. The communities involved already have secured $100,000 from a special fund set up by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Lawton Chiles.
Pensacola is home to four Navy installations, and the slick color brochure the chamber delivered to the commission staff calls the area ``the cradle of naval aviation.'' Whiting Field Naval Air Station ``is the most efficient military training facility in the United States,'' the brochure proclaims, citing figures showing it operates at a lower cost annually ``than any other air station within the Naval Air Training Command.''
A 60-page color booklet the chamber is helping to develop for commission members will state the area's case in greater detail, Taylor promised.
Generally understated for now, base-against-base comparisons like those suggested in the Pensacola brochure figure to become more pointed as the commission gets down to business this spring. Two years ago, authorities in Charleston, S.C., tried to save the city's naval shipyard by disseminating less-than-flattering assessments of Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. The effort failed.
In Imperial County, Calif., Brad Luckey, chairman of the county board of supervisors, already is anticipating the possibility that he'll have to attack the worth of the Navy's base in Yuma, 60 miles away, in order to defend El Centro.
``We don't want to go head-to-head with them, but we will if we have to,'' he said.
Luckey also has put Navy officials and the base closing commission staff on notice that he'll be looking closely at any statistics the Navy develops concerning activities and facilities at El Centro.
He and two other people working on a committee to defend the base found many inaccuracies in the Navy's 1993 data, and they're worried that bad numbers could be used against El Centro again this year.
The base, in a rural community east of San Diego, has only about 100 active duty personnel and serves essentially as a host field for fighter squadrons on training missions, Luckey said. It's also the winter quarters of the Navy's Blue Angels precision flying team.
``It's a small base, but it's important to us,'' Luckey said.
Those involved generally acknowledge that local lobbying efforts, including a $500,000 campaign mounted by government and business leaders in Hampton Roads, are designed to gain the kind of political advantage the base closing process is supposed to be above.
Congress created the base-closing process in the 1980s, giving the commission broad authority to fashion a list of bases to be closed or reorganized. Congress and the president must accept or reject the list as a package, a feature that is supposed to minimize efforts by well-placed congressmen or politically potent states to save their bases.
Still, a community's pleas that a particular base is vital to the local economy can be effective in preserving it, said Berman, the former commission staff member turned lobbyist.
``If there is a compelling story told, I think it has a great impact,'' he said.
During his visit to the commission office, members of the new staff stressed the importance of military value to the commission's deliberations on bases, Imperial County's Luckey said.
``But there's more in this decision-making process than just that . . .'' he added. ``Maybe it's politics.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
SCHEDULE
Here is a schedule for the 1995 round of military base closings, the
fourth and final round scheduled:
January 1995: President appoints new members of the Defense Base
Closure and Realignment Commission.
Jan. 18: Service chiefs submit recommendations to secretaries of
the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Feb. 15: Service secretaries submit recommendations to secretary of
defense.
March 15: Defense secretary submits base-closure recommendations to
the new commission.
March 15 to June 1: Commission holds hearings.
June 1: Commission submits its report to the president.
Three Navy installations in Hampton Roads were ordered shut or
relocated by the 1993 commission: Norfolk Naval Aviation Depot,
Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Suffolk and Naval Electronics
Engineering Center in Portsmouth.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSINGS MILITARY BASES by CNB