Wednesday, May 9, 2007 7:13 AM
Eric Brown
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| Sen. George Voinovich (R) |
Senator George Voinovich has high remarks for a local facility.
Last fall, the Heath Boeing Facility celebrated its 10th Anniversary of its privatization.
Today (Monday) was the first time since the anniversary that Voinovich had the chance to tour the facility.
Voinovich says that the Heath Facility is important to the United States and other World Forces.
“This is a strategic installation not only for the United States of America and NATO and for all of our allies. It’s a gem that it’s right here in Central Ohio.”
Voinovich says that aside from making it safe for the world, The Heath facility has another function.
“It also, incidently provides good jobs. That is something Rick Platt (with the Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority) is interested in and the community is, because you want to keep the tax base up. The other thing that I was concerned about is the question about whether people that have businesses here can attract the human resources here that they need to get the jobs done here.”
Voinovich says that between OSU-Newark and COTC they can hire the people to get the job done.
“They do provide the people to get the job done. They are going to be experiencing the same thing that the Federal Government is experiencing is that with the Baby Boomers retiring, they are going to have a large number of their people retiring. The issue then is can we provide the people they are going to need to remain competitive? The answer to that was, Yes. With working with the educational institutions they were going to be able to do the job.”
Voinovich says that privatizing government facilities should be looked at on a case by case basis.
“(Boeing) makes sense that it is privatized. If you are saying to me that we should privatize everything. The answer to that is I don’t think so. I think that we have a long way to go to capitalize on trying to make sure that the people we already have working for the Federal Government have an opportunity to make their suggestions on how they can be more efficient and work harder and smarter and do more with less.”
Voinovich says that the last time he had the chance to visit the Heath facility was 2002.
