THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060491
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 27 lines
The U.S. Senate has voted to block NASA's plan to relocate eight research aircraft from facilities in Hampton Roads and on the Eastern Shore to an installation in California.
Acting late Wednesday on a bill to provide money to the space agency during 1997, senators included directions barring NASA from going ahead with the move.
NASA administrator Dan Goldin wanted to shift five planes - one of them a Boeing 757 - from the Langley Research Center in Hampton, and three from the Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore, to the Dryden Flight Research Center in California.
But NASA's inspector general concluded the shift would cost $10 million, said a spokesman for U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va. Warner joined forces with Maryland's two Democratic senators, Paul Sarbanes and Barbara Mikulski, and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to sponsor the amendment opposing the transfer.
The Senate vote sends the NASA spending bill into a House-Senate conference committee. A House version of the legislation did not bar the plane shift, so conferees will have to resolve the issue before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1. by CNB