The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Councilmember questions the effectiveness of lobbyists

By Steve Enders

With Moffett Field's future high on the City Council's priority list for the coming year, questions are being raised by at least one councilmember as to whether the city is handling the issue in the right way.

Councilmember Stan Kawzcynski says that the city spends too much money pushing its ideas on how Moffett should be operated. Sunnyvale currently spends $240,000 a year to employ a lobbying firm that represents the city's stance on the closed base to the state, Congress and the Department of Defense.

Kawzcynski said that he originally voted to hire the Beltway firm of Black, Kelly, Scruggs and Healy more than two years ago because the lobbyists promised to help the council make the right choices on base-closure issues. But having already provided guidance on issues such as air cargo, NASA's airplane-consolidation effort and the California Air National Guard's building of a maintenance hangar, Kawzcynski said, the firm is no longer useful to the city.

Onizuka recently announced it would continue to operate through the year 2010, squelching discussions that operations might be moved to Colorado.

"There were talks of moving Onizuka and the 129th Air Squadron," he said. "I thought, 'Maybe we need some assistance.' "

But now, he says, "I don't know what they're doing anymore."

Kawzcynski said he is also frustrated that the lobbyists first took credit for Onizuka's decision. In actuality, he said, it was constituents and veterans groups that wrote letters and lobbied the government to keep Onizuka alive and the squadron intact.

Kawzcynski also says he's not happy he has to ask for a one-page invoice every month from the city that tallies the expenses of the lobbyists--expenses that aren't itemized and that he thinks may be extravagant.

According to Sunnyvale's assistant city manager, Karen Davis, the lobbyists are a good value. "We don't have the staff resources and can't stay in touch with the people [in Washington and Sacramento]," she said. "It's really a quality of life issue for the community as well as a quantitative issue in terms of dollars for the city."

The firm's John Scruggs says that the city has a vested interest in what happens at the base, and that his firm continues to push different uses for the base, such as a disaster center.

With the possibility of Onizuka leaving the area someday, one idea that planners are looking at to fill the void is the creation of a western and national disaster center, which would help in times of natural disasters all over the country and specifically in the Bay Area.

" 'Parallel mission use' is a term for civilian and military use, which is a notion we're trying to move," Scruggs said. "It takes efforts with the Air Force and political efforts as well.

"Someday Onizuka won't be there. Rather than a blue cube, you'll have an empty box, and that's not good for the city."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 14, 1998.
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