State looks at military support

New study aims to promote bases

The five military installations in Arkansas support more than 62,000 jobs and produce $3 billion in labor income, the Governor’s Military Affairs Committee said in a study released Wednesday.

The installations — Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, the Pine Bluff Arsenal, the Fort Chaffee Joint Maneuver Training Center near Fort Smith, Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith and Camp RobinsonCamp Pike in North Little Rock — directly employ 21,000 and support another 41,400 indirect jobs.

The installations produce $4.5 billion in gross state product and generate $330 million in tax revenue, the report said.

In 2015, Gov. Asa Hutchinson established an initiative to support and promote the state’s military installations and related economic development interests, the report said.

Mike Preston, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said the reason for the study “was to make sure that we’re proactively supporting the military and recruiting around it in economic development.

“It also will help us to be

prepared if there is a future round of [base realignment and closure by] the federal government to show that the state is being as supportive as possible,” Preston said.

Other states also have programs to support military installations, such as Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, Preston said.

Florida, where Preston worked before he was hired as the commission’s executive director, has 22 military bases. The Sunshine State has actually succeeded in acquiring more military bases and more missions, Preston said.

Recommendations from the study include initiating community led partnerships to support the state’s military

installations, determining each installation’s capacity to accept new missions, retaining more veterans in the state, capitalizing on expanded National Guard training opportunities at Camp Robinson and investing state resources to enhance military bases, the report said.

The state also hired retired Col. Gary Holland as the commission’s Director of Military Affairs in December.

This is the first time the state has had someone solely focused on military affairs, Preston said.

The key goal for the program is to make the military bases as strong as possible, Holland said in an interview.

“Through the findings and recommendations from this study, we now have a clear vision for our next steps,” Holland said in a prepared statement.

Arkansas has applied with the federal government as the

site for Battlefield Airman training, a program that now is held in seven or eight locations around the country, Holland said. The government is considering consolidating the program in one state. Arkansas is one of about 10 states under consideration, Holland said.

The government won’t make a final decision on the program until 2018, he said.