[B]usiness leaders from Chittenden County and beyond gathered at Burlington International Airport Tuesday to hit back at recent resolutions opposing the F-35 fighter jet basing.
Three cities adjacent to the airport have passed resolutions requesting that the Air Force cancel its plans to base F-35s in Burlington in 2019, and provide the Vermont Air National Guard with an alternative mission.
City councils in South Burlington and Winooski passed resolutions last week. The Burlington City Council voted 9-3 in favor of a resolution in March, following a successful voter referendum on Town Meeting Day. (Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger has said he will not sign that resolution.)
Frank Cioffi, the president of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp. and a longtime proponent of the basing, says cancelling the F-35s would have drastic economic consequences.
What the South Burlington and Winooski resolutions request “is essentially a base closure,” Cioffi said Tuesday. “That would be a loss, we think, of 1,000 jobs. And this economy cannot withstand 1,000 jobs.”
While the U.S. military requires each state to maintain an Air National Guard unit, Cioffi said he believes the Vermont Air Guard could be cut back to as few as 50 people.
The Air Force has not publicly proposed base closure. But Vermont Air Guard officials have recently stressed that there is no alternative mission being planned for the Vermont unit.
All three resolutions use similar language. The measure passed unanimously by the Winooski City Council asks that the F-35 basing be cancelled, and “requests that an alternative mission be identified for the Vermont Air National Guard.”
Winooski Mayor Seth Leonard said that equating the council’s resolution with base closure is not accurate.
“At no point have we passed anything that asked for that to be the case,” Leonard said Tuesday. “We just had a lot of questions about the basing of this particular airplane.”
Leonard said Winooski officials reached out to the Air Force multiple times to ask whether an alternative mission could be available for the Vermont Air Guard. Every time the Air Force responded, he said, the answer was yes.
Helen Riehle, chair of the South Burlington City Council, said Cioffi’s interpretation of their resolution is unfair.
“In court and in letters,” she said, “the Air Force has said there will always be a mission for the Vermont Guard.”
Riehle said members of the public can choose between the interpretation put forth by Cioffi and the Guard, or the Air Force’s past statements. “I guess if I were a betting woman, I’d bet on the Air Force.”
Throughout the debate, opponents to the basing project have pointed to sites elsewhere in the U.S. where local officials have pressured the Air Force to change course, in one case substituting fighter jets with quieter C-130 cargo planes.
“I have no idea where they came up with a C-130,” Cioffi said Tuesday. “We’ve got about as much chance of getting a C-130 here as we do getting the space shuttle.”
GBIC and other economic development groups have argued in favor of the F-35 project since its inception. In February 2018, the group released a study by economist Art Woolf about the economic impact of the basing. Woolf’s analysis shows that the Guard employs 1,060 employees and provides $2.6 million annually in fire and safety services to the airport.
Lisa Ventriss, the head of the Vermont Business Roundtable, said Tuesday that if the base were scaled back, Burlington would need to make up those funds from its own budget. “This is very concerning on a number of levels,” she said.
Gov. Phil Scott has been a consistent advocate of the basing, saying even after Burlington’s vote that regardless of how officials there moved forward, he would continue to encourage and prepare for the planes’ arrival.
Joan Goldstein, the state’s commissioner of economic development, said Tuesday that the basing could provide opportunities for Vermont to play a larger role in the aerospace manufacturing industry, which is a major sector in nearby Quebec.
Betsy Bishop, president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, said manufacturers across the state are positioned to benefit from opportunities the F-35 might bring.
“This is much more than just a Burlington, or South Burlington, or Chittenden County issue,” Bishop said.
Companies like GS Precision, Stevens Precision, UT Aerospace and others already manufacture parts for aircraft and military equipment. Bishop did not say that any of these companies had specific plans to work on the F-35. (The jet is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, which is headquartered in Maryland but subcontracts the manufacturing of some components.)
Win Smith, the CEO of Sugarbush Resort and an honorary commander of the Vermont Air Guard, said he worried about losing competition to ski resorts and airports in upstate New York.
“Do you think the impact is only going to be on the airport? Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s going to be gas stations, it’s going to be restaurants, it’s going to be ski areas.”
Cioffi said he believed the opponents of the basing, who have raised concerns about increased noise levels and safety risks from the new planes, do not represent the views of most Vermonters.
“From a statewide perspective,” he said, “there is huge support for the Vermont Air National Guard, and huge support for this basing.”
Smith, the Sugarbush CEO, said the economic opportunities outweigh the concerns from communities that will be impacted. “Are the F-35 noisier? Yes. Nobody’s arguing that. But that’s one piece of it.”
This story was updated at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday with comments from the South Burlington City Council chair.
