Kellams: Let's begin with Michael Tilley from Talk Business and Politics. Michael, it's been seven days since you were here. Anything happened since?
Tilley: No, nothing. It's been very quiet. Nothing at all has happened. I don't even know what we're going to talk about today.
Kellams: Well, I tell you what, we'll talk about something that happened Thursday morning, which was an official announcement that Lockheed Martin is going to have more people working in the Fort Smith metro.
Tilley: Well, yes. So for those wondering if or when jobs may result from this foreign pilot training center here in Fort Smith, here you go. Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35 jet on which the pilots are training, announced Thursday that instead of 110 workers in Fort Smith, they're going to have at least 230, and they'll hire those within the next 12 to 18 months. So that's quite a boost.
Just by way of reminder, the F-35 jets are here as part of the foreign military sales program of the Department of Defense, training pilots from countries who purchased the planes. So we've had Poland and Finland, and German pilots are coming in later this year, but we'll have pilots from Singapore, Switzerland, Czechia, Greece and Romania. So this training center is supposed to be here for several decades, and it's up and going now.
Lockheed wouldn't provide jobs data in terms of average wages for these folks, but if you look at job recruiter websites, they're from $80,000 a year to $150,000. In 2024, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics had a median salary for aircraft and avionics equipment maintenance folks at just under $80,000. And so, you know, those are pretty good wages. The average wage in Sebastian County is around $57,000, just under $58,000. Now, not all those jobs will pay that much — there's some admin, there's some security. But, so that's, not only are you getting 230 jobs, but I would say a fair share of those are making very good money. So that's a good impact.
We're glad we're finally getting this story out. We've tried several months to try to get Lockheed to talk about how many employees they're going to have, kind of what their jobs are, what their pay may be. So this is the first bit of news we're getting, and hopefully they'll provide more data as they build up their workforce here.
Kellams: Think that there could be similar announcements in the next 12 months or so? Not necessarily from Lockheed Martin, but others.
Tilley: Well, you know, that's kind of been the frustrating part. We think so, and we think there'll be some more as the Singapore — you know, the Singapore delegation is going to be more of a permanent delegation there. F-35 fighter jets and their F-16s will be based here for an extended period of time. And so we've heard that will bring in more maintainers, more support crew, but those will be military and not private sector.
But, yeah, that's — I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. This base is a great thing for Fort Smith, great thing for Arkansas. I just wish we could get more information from all the companies involved about how many jobs they have and what they're paying.
Kellams: America's 250th birthday is approaching July 4. Of course, there will not be a Freedom Truck visit at the Fort Smith Museum of History. It got announced, I think, earlier in June. Now it's off.
Tilley: Yeah, so yeah, you're right, they announced it and a few days later they're like, oh, wait, never mind. So there are two organizations that are pushing this 250th birthday, 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One is sanctioned by Congress and is a bipartisan effort, and the other is organized and pushed by the Trump administration and Trump administration supporters. It's not considered bipartisan.
And so the Freedom 250 group, they have spent at least $10 million to retrofit these six 18-wheeler trucks, their mobile history museums, they're called Freedom Trucks. There's, like I said, there's six of them traveling the country. And the Fort Smith Museum of History — it initially booked one of them to be here in mid-July, but there has been a little bit of controversy.
For example, the museum exhibits for these trucks are created in partnership with Hillsdale College and PragerU. Those are two very conservative groups. They have a history of minimizing the impact of slavery. They promote anti-gay, anti-feminist policies. They are not fans of climate science. There's just some — they're very, there's some very partisan, right-wing views, which, as is their freedom to do.
But the museum, when the museum folks kind of learned about — wait a minute, we got the wrong 250 group — they backed away from it. But part of the statement from Caroline Spear, who's director of the museum, said that after further consideration, we determined that this event did not align with the standards and expectations we set for museum-sponsored programming. So they've canceled it, as you're probably not surprised. There's a lot of storm and fury on social media about it, but the event is off. Who knows if the museum will have any events, but that one is definitely not going to happen.
Kellams: Well, there are different organizations, high-profile musicians — it's a confusing world with these two competing, very similarly named organizations.
Tilley: Yes, it has been. And, you know, it's anyone's keeping up with them. I mean, you've had a lot of artists who are named to attend these events, and then the artist even backed out, like, whoa, whoa, no, we didn't know that's what it was. So this is just another local example of that confusion.
Kellams: So people who pay attention to news in Fayetteville know that NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, have been in the news regarding negotiations between a city and an entity that might want to move in. NDAs, I find, are a topic of discussion in the River Valley as well.
Tilley: Yeah, well, they're popping up all over the country. City governments, county governments are signing these, primarily with respect to developers bringing in these data centers, controversial data centers, and NDAs — what they do is they essentially prevent the public from learning about a project, learning about its water usage, electric usage, location, any public incentives, any ownership info, until the project's been approved, until the deal is done. And then there's no opportunity for public input. So it's getting a little bit of pushback nationwide.
And as you noticed, Fayetteville Mayor Molly Rawn, she came out with a new policy clarifying the city's position on NDAs, essentially said, we won't sign them unless they're approved by the mayor and the city attorney, and we're going to keep them on record. That's been another controversy — these cities and counties, these private developers, attempt to prevent them from being disclosed through the Freedom of Information Act for years.
So I thought I'd ask the county judge, Steve Hotz, and all seven Fort Smith Board of Directors about the policy. Judge Hotz said that he's essentially not a big fan of it, especially for controversial projects like data centers. He understood for non-controversial projects he might be open to them, but kind of leaned against it.
Fort Smith Director Christina Catsavis — she's running for mayor, by the way — she's definitely not for them. Her quote was that growth achieved through secrecy is not the kind of progress that I believe we should pursue. She was the only director to respond to our solicitation for input in the 20 hours between when we asked for their input and when we posted the story. So I don't know if the other directors are not sure of the issue, not sure their opinion on the issue. That may somewhat speak to the unknown and the discomfort around the issue. But I just wanted to get them on record because there's a chance they could be faced with that.
And they also — both the city of Fort Smith and the county — noted that they had not signed an NDA for any project since Jan. 1, 2024.
Kellams: I do want to point out to listeners that our own Sophia Nourani talked with John Wilkerson from the Arkansas Municipal League about NDAs and municipalities, and you can find that conversation from Tuesday's show on our website.
Going back to your website, talkbusiness.net, a story about possible — well, legislation that is being created, whether it gets passed or not, I guess we'll wait and see — that would require hospitals to let cities know earlier if they plan to shut down some critical care opportunities.
Tilley: Yeah, this is — I hate to turn this into the Director Christina Catsavis show, but this was something she pushed earlier this year after Baptist Health in Fort Smith began to announce job cuts. One of the first big job cuts was their labor and delivery operation, which cut about 40 jobs. And so far since March, the hospital has announced at least 260 job cuts, and some pretty critical care — not surgery, but pharmacy, radiology, like I said, labor and delivery, obstetrics.
So she suggested, earlier this year, the city board worked with local legislators to push maybe for a law requiring 180-day notice — was her initial idea. So this week at the study session, Representative Jay Richardson, who represents parts of Fort Smith, was at the study session, and they talked through some concepts, and he agreed to take the idea to work with it, work with the board. He said, quote, "I can't promise you anything, but I'm happy to get it started."
I had interviewed Representative Lee Johnson from Greenwood, who's a physician, and he said earlier this year that it merits consideration, but would require a lot of dialogue.
So I think this legislation is going to have a tough time. A hundred-eighty days is a lot of time. The hospital and medical lobby, they've got a lot of influence in Little Rock. They're going to push back hard on being required to provide advance notice.
But everybody you talk to is like, yeah, people should know — you know, a pregnant person who's two or three months from delivering, all of a sudden your hospital says, yeah, you can't come here no more. That's tough. So I think everybody agrees there should be some kind of notice, but it'll be interesting to see if the Arkansas Legislature has the political will to create some type of advance notice structure.
Kellams: All right, well, I know you'll be keeping up with that, and people can follow that along at talkbusiness.net. Michael Tilley, thank you so much. When we talk again, it will be July.
Tilley: Yeah, and it'll probably be hot.
Kellams: So we can only hope. Most wonderful time of the year.
Tilley: Yeah, that's right.
Kellams: Thank you, Michael.
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