1,850 Jobs Are Spared at Naval Base Ventura County

Breathing a deep sigh of relief, community leaders announced Friday that job losses at Naval Base Ventura County won’t be as bad as initially feared.

In August, the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended shifting as many as 2,250 positions from the coastal installation to the high desert Navy base at China Lake as part of a nationwide plan to streamline military operations.

But elected officials and community leaders said they recently were informed that the Navy had scaled back those plans, putting the Ventura job losses at closer to 400.

Those jobs are expected to shift to China Lake between 2008 and 2011.

At a news conference Friday, local leaders said the Navy was given flexibility to avoid any changes in the plan that might have compromised military readiness.

Among the jobs retained in Ventura County are those associated with operating and maintaining the Navy’s 36,000-square-mile missile testing range off Point Mugu.

“They were told to use some common sense and only execute those parts [of the plan] that made sense,” retired Navy Capt. Jack Dodd, a chief strategist in a county campaign to retain jobs at the Ventura County base, said of Navy officials. “They did the right thing, in my opinion.”

Naval Base Ventura County consists of Point Mugu Naval Air Station and the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center, one of two Seabee bases in the United States.

The base supports about 17,000 government and civilian jobs.

Point Mugu and China Lake were placed under a single command in 1992 as part of a previous realignment. Since then, they have been consolidating operations.

But base supporters in Ventura County said the latest realignment plan went too far.

Last September, President Bush approved the plan, which was meant to streamline operations and save money. But in a months-long lobbying campaign, leaders of the Ventura County base closure task force argued that a Pentagon analysis understated the base’s military value and that the panel’s recommendation would result in little or no savings.

They said the job shift also would weaken testing efficiency and military training and might result in a loss of valuable military expertise because polls showed that more than 80% of those whose jobs would be transferred would quit or retire rather than leave the area.

The relocation of naval jobs would have resulted in the loss of 2,760 private-sector jobs that support functions at the base, the local panel found.

“We really have a significant win,” said Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long, co-chairwoman of the base closure task force.

The base is a key economic engine, pumping nearly $2 billion annually into the local economy.

Local leaders said they needed to help it stay that way.

“The base stands strong, and there is a great future for Naval Base Ventura County,” said county Supervisor Judy Mikels, co-chairwoman of the Regional Defense Partnership for the 21st Century.

“But we should always be looking at our ability to bring new missions and new jobs.”