Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > April > 24
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Kevin Riley: ‘There is life after NCR’
When NCR announced last June that it was leaving, things felt bleak around town, but even more so in the company’s headquarters at Dayton’s southern edge.
Just ask Wayne Reser. An NCR employee, he found out about the company’s decision through media reports and the rumor mill.
“You slump back in your chair and go, ‘wow,’” he said of his reaction.
The next chapter of Reser’s life won’t be in Georgia, where NCR bolted. As he tells his story, you feel a tingle of pride. The company asked the Dayton native to move, but the 23-year employee said no thanks. He found a good job here. Best of all, he seems to represent a growing group of NCR employees.
It has been difficult to find out what’s happening to the 1,200 employees NCR had in Dayton.
The company has been close-mouthed about how many people it has asked to go to Georgia and how many it has cut loose. And the employees themselves are afraid to talk for fear of jeopardizing severance agreements.
When the bad news came, several community organizations banded together and created a website called “ChooseDayton.com,” in an effort to link NCR employees to positions here. That effort sent a strong signal to NCR employees.
According to Reser, they took notice. He describes a copy room at NCR headquarters where someone posted an announcement about the ChooseDayton.com site.
We didn’t want a group of well-educated, professional people leaving Dayton — creating a brain drain with ripple effects that hurt the community.
And despite NCR’s headline-grabbing move that fed into Rust Belt stereotypes, wise people in Dayton knew that our region had a need and place for many of these people.
One big area of need: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
While the base’s structure can be hard to penetrate and understand, one of its most important organizations, the Aeronautical Systems Center, is in a serious growth mode. Excluding people in its 88th Air Base Wing who run the base, ASC has about 2,500 employees who buy and modernize aircraft and weapons — with more than 90 percent of them at Wright-Patt. It has a budget of $23.1 billion.
The Air Force is under pressure to improve how it acquires planes and systems. And it has said it needs more and better employees to do that.
Which brings us back to Reser.
A University of Dayton grad, he grew up in Kettering. He and his wife have two sons and live in Centerville. Now 55, Reser thought he’d retire from NCR, as his grandfather had done. In fact, he still has the chrome-plated wrench his grandfather received upon his leaving “The Cash.”
In 2005, Reser temporarily lost his job for 10 months while NCR restructured. When the company announced it was leaving, he knew what he had to do. Among other things, he attended the ASC job fair held in August at the Nutter Center.
John Day, director of personnel for ASC, says the event helped the Air Force find people it needs, including Reser.
The Air Force doesn’t and can’t give preference to NCR employees, Day said, and he hasn’t tracked how many ex-NCR folks ASC has hired. But the organization plans to hire hundreds of people over the next few years in financial management, contracting and procurement, and program management.
(There has been some debate in the defense contracting world about how many such jobs would be “new.” The Air Force has acknowledged it is beefing up its acquisition workforce, both by converting some contractor positions to civil service jobs, as well as creating new civilian positions.)
Reser is now buying things for the Air Force’s C-130J program as a contract negotiator.
“I’m glad to be here, and I’m learning new stuff every day,” he said.
Reser said he has been running into old NCR colleagues at the base.
“Good to see you. Glad you made the jump,” he says to them.
The experience has made Reser optimistic about his and our region’s prospects.
“This is all good stuff, and, long-term, it’s going to pay off for us,” he said. “There is life after NCR.”
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment |
Editorial: Turner only smart choice in primary
2010 ELECTION
If you come across U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, these days, and he seems even more self-confident than usual, it’s not surprising. Politically speaking, he’s sitting pretty.
Such is the nature of this political year that he does face a challenge in the May 4 primary from the political right, but it’s not serious.
The fact that he voted against the bank bailout, the stimulus and the new health care law is not enough for Rene Oberer, a challenger out of the Tea Party movement in Vandalia.
Add, for good measure, that Rep. Turner was so appalled when the feds saved General Motors by taking over much of its ownership that he proposed a constitutional amendment against such government ownership.
Ms. Oberer does not hold against him his terribly wrongheaded opposition to the efforts of both a Republican and a Democratic president to avoid a depression.
She is a rigid small government ideologue even to the point of opposing extensions of unemployment compensation during the recession, which Rep. Turner has supported. She says people don’t really try to get jobs — or even accept jobs — until their unemployment is running out.
So unbending is her antipathy to big government that she won’t acknowledge the rightness even of the civil-rights legislation of the 1960s, which said, among other things, that people must have access to stores, restaurants, hotels and the front seats of buses irrespective of race.
There is no question about whether Rep. Turner should be renominated.
He’s done a good job on a wide range of local issues. He’s been the go-to guy in the U.S. House of Representatives on matters relating to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, especially because he’s on the Armed Services Committee.
He’s been active on the “earmarks” front, bringing in federal money for worthy local projects. However, he supported the decision of House Republicans to suspend all earmarks for a year. He says that some earmarks going to other districts deserve the bad name that earmarks in general now have. He paints himself as a player in shaping a new approach.
He promotes the Dayton model. Here, earmarks are vetted for merit in a public process. He says earmarks should face hearings in Congress, which they typically haven’t.
Nobody knows how the earmark situation will play out in the long run. A new process? Cosmetic changes? Will all the action move to the Senate, because nobody there has taken even a temporary vow against earmarks?
It would be a shame if earmark money now flows only to House districts that are represented by Democrats just because that party hasn’t taken such a sharp vow against them.
Philosophically, Rep. Turner is a regular Republican. Actually, his biggest deviation was when he joined the conservative wing of the party to oppose President George W. Bush’s bank bailout, which did much to stabilize an economy in free fall, and much of which has been repaid with interest, especially by the bigger banks.
His representation of an urban area allows him, by his own account, to diverge from the party line occasionally without getting in trouble with the party.
For example, with an eye on the huge impact of the foreclosure crisis on Dayton, he has been one of the few Republicans to support “cram down,” the practice of allowing bankruptcy judges to force banks to renegotiate mortgages that homeowners can’t afford.
How well has he progressed in Congress through four two-year terms? He has not won a seat on the Appropriations Committee or another prized committee, much less a leadership position. But, as the ranking Republican on an Armed Services subcommittee, he has won attention as a Republican spokesman on nuclear weapons issues.
Sometimes Rep. Turner lives up to his claim that he’s not “much of a partisan.” He says he believes that Congress — and other bodies — work better when the two parties are working things out, as opposed to one dominating. He may get tested on that soon.
He has enough seniority to chair a significant subcommittee if the next Congress goes Republican.
(Endorsement letters submitted by the candidates are here.)
Permalink | Comments (20) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
