DATE: Saturday, August 16, 1997             TAG: 9708160222

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   97 lines

FUTURE BASE CONSOLIDATIONS SAID TO BODE WELL FOR HAMPTON ROADS

A new round of military base closings, stalled in Congress and viewed with considerable foreboding in Hampton Roads, would likely bring additional Navy assets to the area, according to a senior Navy official.

``We would try to reach as many efficiencies as possible in places where we already have an infrastructure,'' said the Pentagon official, who spoke on condition his name not be published.

That would likely mean transfers of sailors and airmen from remote commands into Hampton Roads and San Diego, which are the Navy's two largest operations centers, ``and will likely remain so,'' he added.

The suggestion of a possible economic bonanza from base closings, with more Navy families and multimillion-dollar payrolls coming into the area, challenges the conventional wisdom among local government and business leaders.

Those authorities have opposed additional closings, fearing that the large concentration of military facilities already in Hampton Roads would make the region a fat target.

The problem, said U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett, D-2nd District, is that ``the Navy doesn't make the final decision.

``The final decision is made by the base closing commission and once you turn this process loose you cannot be certain where it's going to end up.''

Lawmakers in both parties have been wary of further base closings since President Clinton moved in 1995 to save Air Force maintenance depots in Texas and California that were targeted for closure by the independent commission.

Clinton's action helped spur the House and Senate this summer to defer Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's request for additional closings in 1999 and 2001. Though the issue appears dead for this year, Cohen and uniformed leaders say they haven't given up hope.

The administration shut the Texas and California facilities, but transferred their work to private contractors working on the same sites. The move preserved jobs in the two politically potent states. but critics charge that it kept the military from realizing savings that would have come from transferring the work to other Air Force facilities.

The Navy official acknowledged that ``I can't predict what a base closing commission would do.'' But there is considerable open space on local Navy bases to accommodate the relocation of commands and facilities from other areas, he suggested.

Congress has ordered four rounds of base closings over the last decade, each time delegating authority over the process to an independent commission. The Pentagon's recommendations to those commissions have been followed in more than 90 percent of the closings to date.

Service leaders, the Navy official said, believe they can save money through additional consolidations of training, logistics and research and development commands around the country: They've even opened discussions with the Air Force about the possible merger of their independent research and development efforts.

The military views further closings as a way to raise cash that can be used to buy next-generation weaponry. With defense spending expected to remain at about $250 billion per year, the Pentagon must find the money for new ships, airplanes, tanks, and other equipment by reshuffling its budget.

But the four rounds of closings to date have not produced the savings the military hoped for; in particular, the cost of environmental cleanups at the closed bases has skyrocketed.

``That's another reason for deferring action,'' Pickett said. At the least, the Pentagon should wait until it finishes work on closings already ordered, and compares the real cost of the closing process to the projected savings, before undertaking more closures, he argued.

The Navy official acknowledged that Navy savings from base closings have fallen short of projections. Environmental costs have been high and the service has not gotten the income it expected from the sale of abandoned property, he said.

Still, the Navy figures that closings already ordered will produce about $2.5 billion per year in savings once all the expenses associated with the closings have been paid in the middle of the next decade.

``If we could do that again - another two and one-half billion - it would go a long way toward solving that problem we have in affording new ships and aircraft,'' the official said.

Hampton Roads has felt the pain and the gain that can come with base closings. The area lost a naval aviation depot and an undersea warfare center in 1993 but was a big winner in 1995, as fighter jet squadrons from California and Florida were ordered to relocate to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

``There is no doubt in anyone's mind here that the military has to continue to reduce its infrastructure,'' said John A. Hornbeck Jr., president of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. And local business leaders would be pleased if that consolidation spurred the Navy to bring more people into the area, he said.

``We would be delighted,'' Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf agreed. ``The synergy that has been established between all the services'' through their placement of major facilities in the area is something that community leaders want to see expanded, she said.

But Oberndorf said she won't second-guess Pickett's judgment that another closing round soon is a risk the region shouldn't take.

She's confident he ``will take the appropriate action to protect the area,'' the mayor said. KEYWORDS: MILITARY BASE CLOSINGS

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