Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 10, 1993 TAG: 9303100238
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
CUTS HURT WESTERN VA. WORKERS, TOO
Regional business and community leaders agreed Tuesday that Western Virginia often gets overlooked when state officials talk about helping communities deal with defense cuts."We have to make sure that the significant impact on Western Virginia is not lost in all of the hustle and bustle about Northern Virginia and Tidewater," said James Hutchinson, vice president of Brunswick Corp. in Marion.
Hutchinson and about 20 other people attended a Western Virginia regional planning session at the Governor's Conference on Defense Conversion in Richmond.
Western Virginia was the recipient of $600 million in defense contracts in 1991, only 3.3 percent of the state's total.
Nearly 70 percent of the $600 million was for contracts at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and ITT's Electro-Optical Products Division in Roanoke County.
In the last several years those two companies have had more than 2,000 layoffs between them.
Hutchinson stressed, however, that many other large employers in Western Virginia depend heavily on defense dollars.
Brunswick, even with sales of about $90 million last year, has seen its employment level drop from 1,200 to 600 in the last two years. Brunswick makes a variety of composite products like flaps for airplane wings.
William F. Snyder, president of Wytheville Community College, said while Western Virginia receives only a small percentage of the state's defense dollars the percentage of the region's jobs from that money is extremely high.
"The Tidewater area knows that 12 percent of its work force is defense related," he said. "I'd be willing to bet that the percentage in Western Virginia is higher than that."
Several speakers pointed out the fact that the Governor's Task Force on Defense Conversion doesn't have a single member from Western Virginia.
The 16-member task force, created in 1990 and co-chaired by Cathleen Magennis, state secretary of economic development, has nine members from the Tidewater area and and four from Northern Virginia.
Magennis said the task force hasn't overlooked the impact defense cuts are having on Western Virginia. She pointed out that the task force visited the Radford arsenal earlier this year and held a public hearing to talk about defense conversion.
Northern Virginia and Tidewater have gotten more attention because cuts in those areas have a greater impact on the state's overall economy, she said.