Study: Arlington No. 1 in homeland security contracts
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Department of Homeland Security paid private contractors in Arlington more than $818 million in 2004 _ the most in any single jurisdiction, according to a study by a Virginia Tech professor.
The amount was nearly 30 percent of all the department’s contracts, exceeding what was spent in the Dallas and San Francisco areas combined.
Heike Mayer, assistant professor in the department of urban affairs and planning, conducted the study for the Arlington Office of Economic Development. The results are welcome news on the heels of the federal base-closing commission’s recommendation last month that about 18,000 Department of Defense workers be moved from leased office space in Arlington to military bases.
“The implications of these findings are enormous,” said Terry Holzheimer, Arlington’s director of economic development. “…Arlington is truly the center of the homeland-security universe.”
The study underscored the importance of homeland-security spending in fueling the economic boom in northern Virginia and the rest of the Washington area.
Mayer found that the federal government spent $18 billion on homeland-security products and services between 2001 and 2004. More than half went to companies in the Washington area.
The study identified Arlington as the center for high-tech-product procurement in homeland security. The high-tech sector accounted for 17 percent of the total U.S. high-tech procurement in homeland security. Within the Washington area, Arlington businesses captured almost 36 percent of the regional total, almost twice the tally for Fairfax County.
A large part of the county’s advantage is its location across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, Mayer said.
“Arlington’s close proximity to government agencies is a key strategic advantage,” she said. “The county has been very successful in attracting a talented labor pool that a budding knowledge-based industry like the homeland-security market requires.”
Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com