Senator, others discuss importance of base on local
economy, possibility of new tanker bedding down here
By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., visited the West Plains last Thursday to discuss the future of Fairchild Air Force Base and how a long awaited tanker contract might impact the local aerospace community.
The Inland Northwest Aerospace Coalition invited Murray to speak to a broad audience of community and business interests at Triumph Composite Systems, an aerospace parts supplier located just east of Airway Heights.
“Whenever I talk about aerospace people assume I am talking about Everett or Renton and I always have to correct them and say, ‘well you need to come with me to Spokane,'” Murray said, referring to the more than 80 companies in the Spokane area tied in to the aerospace industry.
The Senator said sometime before December the Pentagon will declare either Boeing or European competitor Airbus the winner of a contract to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of KC-135 refueling aircraft, a decision she sees as long overdue.
The $35 billion contract has been marked by reversals and setbacks for years, but Murray said she and others on the Senate defense appropriations committee are done waiting. “We've been telling them we do not want to hear the word ‘delay' out of your mouth ever again,” she said, adding that the contract will not only create much needed jobs, but get military personnel out of 50-year-old tankers that are increasingly costly to maintain.
Murray has continually spoken against giving the tanker bid to Airbus and said overseas production of “the backbone of our entire military” would compromise national security. “If we lose our ability to build our tanker here, who can predict who our enemy could be 25 years from now? We cannot understand the world that we cannot see,” she said.
Boeing is no longer centered in Washington, but still employs tens of thousands of workers here. Some Eastern Washington aerospace businesses that supply Boeing could also see a business boost if the company receives the KC-X contract.
The issue of where the KC-X will eventually be housed was also addressed by Murray, who said as soon as a contract is awarded she will push Fairchild forward as an eventual bed-down site.
Greg Bever, publisher of the Journal of Business and chair of the advocacy group Forward Fairchild, thanked Murray for her assistance in securing military construction funds to keep the base modernized and off Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) lists in recent years. “The more missions we have the more important this base is to our military strategy,” he said, adding that proponents of the base must remain diligent in their efforts to keep the base viable as there are likely to be more closures in the future.
Randy Barcus, Avista chief economist and a Forward Fairchild member, gave the audience a rundown of the base's economic impact on the region, estimating that one of every 13 local dollars spent in the Spokane area comes either directly or indirectly from Fairchild. “If you think about what an Air Force base is, its export is national defense and its import is money from Washington, D.C. to fund the facilities,” Barcus said.
Barcus said the local defense spending has had a stabilizing effect. “The economic impact of the recession would have been far more severe in the Spokane community if not for the base,” he said.
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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