New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
$75 million Sikorsky tax deal gains approval in CT legislature
HARTFORD — First the House of Representatives, then the Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved an eight-year, $75-million sales, use and corporate taxcredit deal for the Sikorsky Aircraft Division of Lockheed Martin that is predicated on the iconic helicopter maker winning one or two potential contracts.
The 130-14 and 34-1 votes send the bill to the governor one week from the adjournment of the General Assembly. If Sikorsky wins the contract for the U.S. Army’s Defiant X, or/and the Raider X vertical lift helicopters, the company’s headquarters would remain in Stratford until at least 2042, with as many as 7,500 full-time, highpaid jobs.
Sikorsky would spend about $470 million a year to its diverse Connecticut supply chain, and also expand its diversity and inclusion program to hire more women and people from disadvantaged communities.
“Everything Sikorsky does reverberates through the economy,” Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said during the brief evening debate in the Senate.
“I think it’s a smart agreement,” said Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford. “They build Marine One, the president’s helicopter.
And I strongly believe that if the president rides, as commander-in-chief, in the world’s best helicopter, then it’s incumbent on us to make sure that every other military personnel, our men and women in the armed forces across the world, should also ride in a helicopter made in the world-class facilities of Sikorsky.”
“Most importantly, they will commit to stay in Connecticut,” said Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, co-chairman of the tax-writing legislative Finance Committee, during the earlier House debate. “Not
just for their headquarters, not just for these two helicopters if they win the contract, but for every single helicopter that they currently make in Connecticut will stay here under the terms of this deal for 20 years.”
Sikorsky would commit to spending $70 million to $80 million in annual capital expenditures invested in the state.
Scanlon said it is estimated that the $75 million state investment could translate to $670 million in net new revenue over 20 years.
“It is of paramount importance to them and Connecticut, and frankly, I think, to
our country that they win one or two of these contracts, not just for the jobs, but for the importance of this industry to the entire state, of all the suppliers, of the guy who runs the deli, the dry cleaner, the real estate agent, all of those that have an ancillary effect,” Scanlon said.
State Rep. Holly Cheeseman, of East Lyme, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, who engaged in a general question-and-answer discussion with Scanlon for about a half-hour, said the deal is important for the state.
“Living in the eastern part of Connecticut, I saw only too-well at Electric Boat when
those submarine contracts came to an end in the ‘90s and 2000s a company that is now, thanks to those new contracts, hiring aggressively,” Cheeseman said. “On a similar scale, this is what Sikorsky faces, once those Black Hawk and Scout helicopter contracts come to an end. This is the right step for Connecticut.”
Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, noted that Sikorsky is soon to observe its 100th anniversary. “I can’t stress enough what the establishment of this agreement and the existence of this company means to the town of Stratford and its surrounding municipalities,” he said.
“I can’t go anywhere without running into a neighbor or somebody in my town who is not affiliated somehow with Sikorsky, whether they are making the pizza for them to have for lunch or giving them haircuts or working on their cars, everybody has a piece of the action there in Stratford,” said Rep. Ben McGorty, RShelton.