Region has a right to receive special treatment from state

While we applaud Gov. Bob Taft and the Ohio Senate for recognizing the importance of hiring consultants to lobby Congress on behalf of Ohio's military installations, we urge the governor and the General Assembly to pay special attention to the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.
The reason is obvious: Closing the base, which houses the Air Force Reserve's 910th Airlift Wing, would have a greater negative impact on the local economy than the loss of any other base would have on its community.
Taft is well aware that the Mahoning Valley continues to lag behind the rest of the state in the creation of jobs and the redevelopment of its urban centers, and that it cannot afford to lose a major employer. The station has more than 2,000 full- and part-time Air Force reservists, civilians and contractors. Last year, the base pumped $86 million into the Valley's economy. More than 570 off-base jobs were created as a result of the facility's economic impact.
For this region, its closing would be akin to the collapse of the region's steel industry in the 1970s.
The $3.5 million the governor requested in his two-year budget to finance the campaign to keep Ohio's bases off Congress' 2005 closing list was deleted from the House's version of the budget. The Senate is expected to restore $2.5 million.
Major challenge
Given the differences between the House and Senate budget bills, a conference committee will have to reach a compromise. It is essential that the compromise contain money to hire the consultants. Let there be no misunderstanding as to the challenge Ohio faces. Every state with military bases is lobbying Congress -- some started a year ago.
Given the intense competition, it is possible that states with several bases will have to give up at least one. If Ohio is faced with such a proposition, we would remind the Republican governor and the Republican controlled General Assembly that the Mahoning Valley has already been victimized to maintain the status quo in other parts of the state.
That was in 1993 when Democrat Bill Clinton entered the White House and had to make a decision on a plan to consolidate the Pentagon's accounting centers scattered around the country into regional operations. The plan was developed by the administration of Clinton's predecessor, George H.W. Bush, and a national competition was held to determine where the regional offices would be located.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton came to the Mahoning Valley and publicly promised that if the region's application was among the top in the nation, one of the regional entities would be located here.
However, once Clinton became president, influential Democratic members of Congress whose areas stood to lose the smaller accounting centers lobbied the White House to shelve the plan.
In Ohio, Cleveland and Columbus were in danger of losing their centers because their applications paled in comparison to the one submitted jointly by Trumbull and Mahoning counties. The regional accounting operation would have meant 5,000 to 7,000 high-paying jobs.
Escape hatch
The two major cities persuaded then Ohio Sen. John Glenn, a Democrat, to write to the White House on their behalf, thus giving President Clinton an escape hatch from the promise he had made to the predominantly Democratic Mahoning Valley.
That broken promise will not be forgotten. Indeed, it has enabled statewide Republican candidates to make political inroads in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
Taft and other prominent Republican officeholders have enjoyed strong support from The Vindicator because of their willingness to pay special attention to the needs of the Valley -- and their record of keeping campaign promises.
Indeed, Ohio's two U.S. senators, Mike DeWine and George V. Voinovich, both Republicans, have established strong ties to the Valley and to this newspaper, going back to when Voinovich was governor and DeWine was lieutenant governor.
They, like Taft, are well aware of the challenges confronting this region. And they know that the closing of the Youngstown Air Reserve Station would undermine their efforts to help revive the local economy.
Thus, while we strongly support the hiring of consultants to lobby on behalf of all the military bases in Ohio, we are unabashedly provincial when it comes to our local installation.