Monday, May 20, 2013
The long-term details aren’t all worked out yet, but the Navy will send enough money to Bath Iron Works to avoid lay-offs at least through April while contracts are finalized for two more DDG-1000 destroyers.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st, said she got that promise earlier today from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.
Pingree is on the House Armed Services Committee. Both she and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have been urging the Navy to move forward on awarding the contracts for the new destroyers.
A Collins spokesman said today that the senator too has personally spoken with Mabus and “repeatedly urged” the Navy to move forward on the contracts and to award interim funding, too.
Bath Iron Works currently is working on the first DDG-1000 and has been negotiating with the Navy on contracts for the next two, Pingree’s office says.
“The secretary was very clear about layoffs,” Pingree said in a statement following her conversation with Mabus. “He assured me that no one was going to get laid off at BIW in the short term because of a lack of funding from the Navy.”
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Kevin Miller is Washington bureau chief for the Portland Press Herald and MaineToday Media. He has worked as a journalist in Maine for 6 ½ years, covering the environment, politics and the State House. Before arriving in Maine, he wrote about politics, government and education for newspapers in Virginia and Maryland.
Kevin can be reached at 317-6256 or kmiller@mainetoday.com
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