THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 14, 1996 TAG: 9602140001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
The news that Navy spending was up in Hampton Roads in 1995 - $10.6 billion compared with roughly $7 billion in each of the four preceding years - is cause for cheer. It is not cause for complacency.
Hampton Roads is heavily dependent upon defense spending - too heavily dependent for its long-term good.
Yes, the world is still a dangerous place.
Yes, protecting U.S. security and U.S. vital interests in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere dictates big Pentagon budgets indefinitely.
Yes, it has seemed plausible all along that a leaner Navy would concentrate much of its diminished fleet in Hampton Roads, sparing the region - at least in the near term - the damage done by base closings in other areas. The Navy infrastructure is far more extensive in Hampton Roads than in lesser harbors, thus better able to accommodate large numbers of warships, aircraft and military personnel and their families.
But gradual or abrupt shifts in national spending priorities and war-technology breakthroughs could thin the military presence that now probably accounts for roughly 40 percent of Hampton Roads' total economic activity.
Defense spending in Hampton Roads has long been a stabilizing economic element. To a degree envied in many other places, Hampton Roads has been spared the sharp economic swings that afflict regions dependent primarily upon, say, manufacturing or tourism. The disproportionately larger importance of military spending fully justifies Plan 2007's economic-development goal of having Hampton Roads become ``the defense establishment's primary strategic center on the East Coast'' by 2007.
But attaining that single goal would not reverse the regional decline in per-capita income, currently 86 percent of the national norm, nor accelerate economic growth, which in Hampton Roads trails that in other major metropolitan areas in the Southeast. That's why Plan 2007 - a private-sector effort engaging the energies, experience and talent of hundreds of Hampton Roads residents - proclaims six goals in all. The remaining five call for the region to also become by 2007:
The Eastern Seaboard's premier port.
A maritime complex possessing unique shipbuilding and ship-repair capabilities.
A center of advanced technological research, engineering and manufacuturing enterprises.
A globally competitive tourist destination.
To put a fine point on it, greater prosperity depends upon enhancing the non-defense sectors of the regional economy.
There is abundant reason to be grateful that Hampton Roads has largely escaped the severe consequences of the military's downsizing and even to score some gains (more Navy ships and aircraft, for example) from others' losses.
But a region as heavily dependent upon defense - or any other income generator - must expand and diversify private-sector activity to build in cushions against economic shocks. Taking the region's current comparative good fortune for granted would be perilous. by CNB