USA Today / Associate Press
Reno-based Tactical Air Support Inc. saves the government money, said CEO RC Thompson. It is the only commercial company in the world with the turboprop aircraft Super Tucano, which is used by nine air forces around the world, according to an Associated Press report.
Nevadans are frustrated with the failure of Washington, D.C., politicians to reach a deal Friday to avoid $85 billion in automatic budget cuts.
The across-the-board cuts to both government defense and domestic spending will make it harder for Nevada medical researchers, small business owners and airport employees to do their jobs.
“The science is difficult anyway,” said James Kenyon, senior associate dean for research at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. “We’re used to difficult. What (the sequester) makes it for us is very frustrating because we would like to be doing this research that has been identified as highly meritorious by our peers.”
Nevada receives about $20 million a year from the federal National Institutes of Health for research. About $18 million of it goes to the medical school based in Reno. Current research projects include mechanisms in male infertility, development of a cure for muscular dystrophy, investigation of heart disease and several neuroscience studies.
The medical school staff is expecting the federal grant amounts to be cut by about 10 percent, which would mean a loss of $2 million in biomedical research funds in the state, Kenyon said.
The cuts would affect purchases of supplies and equipment and, eventually, employment of researchers, graduate assistants and doctoral fellows.
“At the very least, this is going to slow down projects and some projects simply won’t be done,” he said.
The effects already have been felt as the NIH has been slow to award grants, and Kenyon said he expects that current projects will get lower funding this year.
Details are unknown about which programs will be targeted and how the budget cuts will be implemented, he said. The NIH funding can’t be found anywhere else.
Small businesses with government contracts also are bracing for slowdowns.
Reno-based Tactical Air Support Inc. saves the government money, said CEO RC Thompson.
The company, which was founded in 2006 by a group of Top Gun instructors who served at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, provides consulting and air services to the military.
“Our whole model was to help the military to save money and maintain readiness,” Thompson said.
The former instructors and pilots help develop tactical plans and provide insight to engineers who are building future aircraft and weapon systems.
The company also provides basic fighter pilot training at a lower expense because the aircraft they use costs less to operate than the advanced fighter jets.
It is the only commercial company in the world with the turboprop aircraft Super Tucano, which is used by nine air forces around the world, according to an Associated Press report.
This week, Sparks-based Sierra Nevada and Embraer, based in Brazil, were awarded a controversial $427 million U.S. Air Force contract to build at least 20 of the light air-support planes for use in Afghanistan.
Tactical Air positioned itself to be a U.S. expert in the Super Tucano, Thompson said.
“Realistically, budget cuts are good for us because we save the government money,” he said. “So, that’s a good thing. The bad thing is the cuts right now aren’t making any sense. So, even though we have a program that saves the government money, we’re very concerned because we are in danger of having our contracts cut.”
Thompson also faces slower contract payments from the federal government.
“When you are a small business, cash flow is king,” Thompson said.
While Tactical Air won’t go out of business if the sequester lingers, he said, it might have to change directions to international clients and potentially cut jobs.
It employees about 30 full-time people across the country. But the sequester means that they might lose 20 people because the bulk of their contracts come from the U.S. government.
“These cuts will hurt our economy, they will cost us jobs,” President Barack Obama told reporters after meeting 52 minutes on Friday with congressional leaders on the impact of the massive cuts, which are set to begin at midnight.
Obama attributed the “dumb, arbitrary cuts” to Republican refusal to agree to a new debt reduction plan that includes higher taxes on wealthy Americans through the closing of loopholes and deductions.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after the meeting that Obama got a tax increase in the January agreement to end the last budget impasse, the so-called fiscal cliff.
“The discussion about revenue in my view is over,” Boehner said. “It’s about cutting the spending in Washington.”
The Federal Aviation Administration already announced its plans to address the budget cuts.
It was reported last week that the Reno-Tahoe International Airport could lose the midnight shift for air traffic controllers beginning April 1 because of furloughs, the FAA said.
While the control tower would not be manned overnight, pilots can still land and take off from the airport safely if they observe FAA-recommended procedures, according to the FAA website.
Thousands of airports across the country have no towers, and basic right-of-way and established traffic-flow rules exist to prevent collisions.
Pilots are responsible for their own safety by communicating with each other about runway and air space locations, FAA officials said.
USA Today and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
