Chennault Tenant, Northrop Grumman, Awarded Contract—More Local Jobs

By Nancy Correro
The Times of SWLA



While we are still in the doldrums of a recession, there is an upswing in the job market for Lake Charles at the Chennault International Airport. The U.S. Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a nine-year contract to provide Contractor Logistics Support for its fleet of KC-10 Extender refueling tanker aircraft.

This came as a blow to Boeing who lost out on the $3.8 billion contract.

The award will bring with it jobs. The latest number mentioned is 300 workers.

“The 300 jobs will be over time. It won’t be overnight. As far as I know, they have already started hiring. I know they [Northrop Grumman] can’t talk about this right now and probably we are not supposed to do a whole lot of talking about it either. We can’t talk on their behalf, but as far as I know they have probably already started,” said Randy Robb, Executive Director of Chennault International Airport.

The skilled job recruitment will be pulled from the local community and elsewhere. There will be some local people trained through Sowela specifically for these jobs.

“The jobs will be skilled jobs pulling from both here and elsewhere. In a press release they said that Sowela will be training to their standards quite a few folks. It costs less to train local folks than to bring in a whole lot of people from out of state,” said Robb.

Northrop Grumman will provide supply chain management, depot-level logistics integration and support, engine maintenance, aircraft maintenance and modifications for the KC-10 refueling tanker.

The tanker/cargo aircraft is part of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command arsenal and has supported anti-terrorist and humanitarian operations around the globe.

The work will be performed at Northrop Grumman's Lake Charles Maintenance and Modification Center here in Lake Charles and at teammate TIMCO Aviation Services' facility in Greensboro, N.C.

"We are excited to partner with the Air Force on the KC-10 CLS program and are committed to working with the Air Force to ensure the KC-10 is ready to support air mobility requirements anywhere, anytime," said Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman chairman and chief executive officer. "This award further demonstrates Northrop Grumman's important role as a premier provider of air mobility solutions."

Under the terms of the contract, Northrop Grumman will provide supply chain management, depot-level logistics integration and support, engine maintenance, aircraft maintenance and modifications for the KC-10 refueling tanker. The tanker/cargo aircraft is part of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command arsenal and has supported anti-terrorist and humanitarian operations around the globe.

"Our clear focus now is to conduct a flawless phase-in that will facilitate the superior program performance that both the U.S. Air Force and Northrop Grumman demand, which is also what is required to support the great men and women of our armed services serving this country proudly across the globe protecting freedom's frontier," said James Cameron, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman's Technical Services sector.

Northrop Grumman is a tenant at Chennault International Airport along with Aeroframe, Louisiana Millworks, and Million Air.

Northrop Grumman has been actively building the Joint STARS aircraft for the United States Air Force at Chennault for 12 years. The Chennault International Airport Authority has worked closely with Northrop Grumman throughout its tenure in Lake Charles.

Aeroframe Services has operated at Chennault since 2000 as a commercial aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul company.

Million Air is Chennault's Fixed Base Operator for charter operations and business and general aviation services with several amenities.

Louisiana Millwork supplies many products to the independently-owned retail lumber and building material companies throughout its expanding market area.

“We are so proud to have a quality company here like Northrop Grumman,” Robb said. And also quality companies like Aeroframe, Million Air, and Louisiana Millworks, here at Chennault; we think we are performing our mission here to promote jobs.”

District Attorney John DeRosier Talks New Tax

By Nancy Correro
The Times of SWLA




District Attorney John DeRosier has called for a ten year 0.75 mill property tax so that he may give raises and benefits to the employees of the District Attorney’s office.

The tax will be on the November 14 ballot if the State Bond Commission approves it.

“I know that now is not a good time to ask for a tax of any kind even though it is the smallest tax in history, but I don’t have any alternatives,” said DeRosier.

John DeRosier is proud of the people at the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s Office. He says that in order to keep a highly qualified staff, he needs to raise their salaries to reflect the salaries of other comparable parishes.

“Lafayette Parish District Attorney starts their misdemeanor secretaries at $2210 a month, Baton Rouge—$2000 a month, Shreveport up in Caddo Parish—$1750 a month, St. Tammany over in Slidell they start theirs at $1750 a month. What do you think we start our misdemeanor secretaries out at over here? $1333 a month. There is a big difference.”

DeRosier said that some of his workers have second jobs just to make ends meet because often they have a family and children and this is their only source of income.

“We have a number of our misdemeanor people here, particularly misdemeanor secretaries who have second jobs. I know because I go to some of the restaurants where they work at night and it really makes me feel bad that I can’t give them a raise.”

The felony prosecutors that have been here ten and twelve years make $65 to $70,000 a year, but they can go into the private sector and make $100,000 to $170,000 a year.

One of the first things DeRosier did after he got elected was form the Calcasieu Full Force. That involved every law enforcement agency in the parish.

“We all participated in DWI [driving while intoxicated] check points. That is why we have had such a significant increase. In the last 4 years we have almost doubled the number of DWI’s that are going through this office. Now, I don’t think that that is because we have that many more people drinking and driving in Calcasieu Parish, I think that is because we are catching a whole lot more,” DeRosier said.

They have Assistant District Attorneys and support staff that go to these check points along with law enforcement. They learn about it from every different direction. They learn about it from the people who actually have to take the test and they learn about it from the perspective of the police officers that have to enforce it. In 1999, the DA’s office handled about 450 DWI’s. Last year they handled 1,523.

“I myself go out to most of the check points and we’re there until midnight or one or two o’clock in the morning lots of times. All of our young prosecutors that prosecute DWI’s—we make them go out there—they actually have to not only watch, but take the field sobriety test out there in the field in the middle of the night,” DeRosier said.

The old 3.16 mill tax that passed about 24 years ago has five years before it is renewed.
DeRosier thinks the 24 year old mill tax was a good thing at the time.

“As a result of that tax the parish does not have to support us. The parish does not contribute anything to the operations of the district attorney’s office. The parish furnishes us with a building and utilities and that’s it. And 24 years ago, the tax was enough money for us to do what we needed to do—now it does not do that.”

DeRosier wants a separate formula by which he can generate the smallest amount of money necessary to have a firm pay plan.

“When you look at the whole plan you will realize you wouldn’t call this a pay raise. It’s not that much of a pay raise because our people who are starting off at $16,000 a year, under the new pay plan they would start off at $18,000 a year. Not exactly a bonanza, but at least it shows them that we care enough in this community to pay them as much as we can reasonably do to ensure good quality people in the criminal justice system—and that is what it is really all about,” DeRosier said.

The DA’s Office handles thousands of cases here a year. DeRosier said that the felonies and misdemeanors that they will receive will probably be around 23,000 new charges for the calendar year 2009. Some of those are 2 or 3 charges against the same individual, but basically they are going to handle about a thousand charges a week.

“And a lot of those, by the way, are juveniles. Some of the most horrendous sexual assault cases are juveniles. A lot of them—more than you would ever think. When I first got here we had one lawyer doing juveniles and now we have three. We have three judges doing juvenile court and now I have three prosecutors doing juvenile court,” DeRosier said.

“It’s just a tremendous volume and it is serious business. You’re talking about aggravated rape, and not just one or two a year—a lot of them and it’s just in the juvenile justice system.”
He said that we have a tremendous number of homicides in Calcasieu Parish. Two years ago we had 19.

“Fortunately, it’s dropped a lot. In the last two years we haven’t had that many. We’ve got to prosecute all of those cases. Those are all bad guys.”

There are a lot of molestation cases in the adult criminal justice system. DeRosier said, “It takes a special kind of prosecutor to prosecute those for a long time. Prosecutors are very quickly burned out doing those kinds of cases and if I were to show you some of the photographs of some of the cases we have, you would cry. It takes a bright person that can practice law, go to court, and handle a trial of that magnitude.”

Those “special kinds” of prosecutors, those “bright” people could easily make more money in the private sector and not be tortured by such difficult cases.

“These prosecutors could make a heck of a lot more money than they are going to make here in the DA’s office. But what I’m trying to do is give them some hope anyway, some light at the end of the tunnel.”