NEWS ANALYSIS : El Toro Message Muddled

If the decision on whether to close the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station hinges on political clout and the comparative strength of presentations offered at last week’s base closure hearings, then El Toro would seem to have little chance of surviving.

At key moments in the public hearings, local citizens and officeholders fighting to save El Toro lacked the political deftness or cohesion displayed by other California communities faced with base closings.

While other delegations showed a united front of congressmen, mayors and business leaders, Orange County was splintered, a condition highlighted by Newport Beach’s proposal that El Toro be closed and turned into a commercial airport.

Privately, El Toro supporters acknowledge they probably did not make a good first impression on the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. But then, they are quick to point out, politics and impressions are not supposed to matter, only the facts.

As a result, they have quickly set out to refine their message: that closing El Toro and moving the Marines to the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego will waste hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and hurt the military’s operational effectiveness.

In a follow-up to Tuesday’s third and final hearing in California, a south Orange County citizens coalition and county government staffers recapped their case Wednesday as they escorted Commissioner Peter B. Bowman on a tour of El Toro. On Friday, they recorded their arguments on a videotape that eventually will land on the desks of base commissioners, members of Congress and even White House staffers.

The law states that the commissioners must base their decision on eight specific and presumably objective criteria--primarily, whether the facility has “military value” and whether the closure contributes to overall cost savings.

But the base closure law also allows President Clinton and Congress to give the entire base closure package a thumbs up or down. So while politics is not supposed to count, there is no way to keep it out of the process.

So no matter the merits of their case, the citizens group faces an uphill struggle to save El Toro without the backing of key political leaders.

“El Toro has been abandoned by the politicians,” said Lake Forest Councilwoman Marcia Rudolph, who heads the citizens coalition fighting the Pentagon’s decision to close the base. “But we feel very much that these honest people (on the commission) are going to be looking at the facts and it is now our job to get the facts to them.”

At the outset, El Toro suffers politically because of its location--inside the boundaries of one of the nation’s most Republican counties that has few political ties to the Clinton Administration.

Also, most of Orange County’s conservative Republican congressmen have chosen not to oppose the Pentagon recommendation to close El Toro on the assumption it would save taxpayers’ dollars.

The state’s top leadership--Gov. Pete Wilson and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein--have vigorously taken up the fight to save all 10 California bases on the closure list, citing the economic hardship it would incur. But they have concentrated their efforts on the cluster of Northern California bases targeted for closure, while barely mentioning El Toro before the commission.

On the first day of hearings in Oakland, Wilson impressed the commissioners by saying that California had less than 15% of the nation’s Defense Department personnel, but had lost 60% of the jobs that were cut during the first two rounds of base closures. In the current round, half of the jobs expected to be lost also will occur in California, according to a study by Wilson’s office.

The report also showed that areas in Northern California would see their unemployment rates double or triple because of the base closings, while Orange County’s jobless rate would go up by less than two points--from 6.5% to 8.3%--assuming the economy remains stagnant.

During the two days of hearings in Oakland, the two senators and the governor fervently argued on behalf of some Northern California installations.

Two days later in San Diego, Wilson was the only one of the three to testify, and he pointed out specific concerns about the recommended closure of the San Diego Naval Training Center and realignment of March Air Force Base in the Inland Empire.

By contrast, the governor said of El Toro: “I will not comment on whether El Toro or Miramar is the best place for these Marine air operations, but I believe a far more thorough review is needed.”

Among the local congressional delegation, only Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) has taken an active role, pressuring the Pentagon to prove whether the move will save money. Still, he has not taken a firm position on the issue.

Cox faces a political dilemma involving divergent interests of two constituencies--supporters of the base and Newport Beach business and political interests that favor a commercial airport at El Toro.

As leader of the delegation attending the hearings, Cox decided to allow Newport Beach a seat at the witness table during the San Diego hearing. Their presence effectively interrupted the flow of the anti-base-closing arguments.

With Cox as the moderator, the Orange County delegation attempted to crowd 10 speakers into their allotted one-hour time slot. Sandwiched right in the middle was former Rep. Robert E. Badham, now a consultant for Newport Beach, who began his comments by chiding Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley for not introducing the Newport Beach mayor.

Where other delegations half that size had shown unity, Orange County was squabbling.

And while other communities had filled their presentations with precise counterpoints to the Pentagon’s conclusions, the message from El Toro supporters seemed diluted by their attempts to include too many political interests--a Leisure World resident, a chamber of commerce representative, a former Marine general, a state assemblyman and local city council members, to name a few. It led to confusion.

When a commissioner asked where they should send helicopter squadrons from the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station--scheduled to close by 1997--if the move to Miramar is canceled, one panelist replied that the commission should reverse its earlier decision and keep Tustin open or move them to March Air Force Base. But that was followed by a Tustin councilwoman’s request to the commission that the Tustin base be closed on schedule.

After repeated warnings from commissioners that the group was exceeding its time limit, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez tossed aside his six-minute-long closing speech and wrapped up the presentation in about 30 seconds. They had run 20 minutes over and been cut off by the federal panel.

Publicly, members of the citizens coalition explained that they were restricted by the tight format. But privately, they steamed.

They had not matched the drama displayed at the Oakland hearings, where 30 busloads of shipyard workers had filled the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in support of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Nor had they demonstrated the political muscle that was flexed on behalf of the Alameda Naval Air Station by Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and other political leaders.

With the hearings behind them, Lake Forest Councilwoman Rudolph said they now have the facts working in their favor.

During the hearing, the coalition sowed the seeds of “reasonable doubt” by claiming that the Pentagon had underestimated the moving costs by about $750 million.

Two days later, local Marine commanders confirmed that the figures will be even higher. A preliminary report sent to the Pentagon on Thursday showed that the cost to move the Marines from El Toro and Tustin to Miramar will cost $1.268 billion instead of the $340 million originally projected by the Navy.

The new estimate caused Cox to reply: “These numbers simply do not add up to a sound decision to close El Toro. It’s tough to stare $1.2 billion in the eye and not back down.”

And Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who was initially convinced that the move would save tax dollars, has shifted to a “wait and see” position.

“This (videotape) is our opportunity to say what we could not say” at the hearing, Rudolph said. “Having been through that process, we are now beginning to have a feel for the things that they think are important.

“I am going to assume (the commissioners) want to do the best job possible,” she added. “And if they do, they will look at this video and look at the facts.”