Foundation tries to help Nellis air show, hits federal hurdle

"With sequestration looming, we’re going to have defense cuts," said David M. Radcliffe, president of the American Airpower Foundation.

He was referring to deep budget cutbacks that Congress and the Obama administration are locked into, barring a new budget deal.

"We want to augment their funding so they can reduce the cost of putting on an open house," he said.

Radcliffe, a real estate agent and former Las Vegas police officer, discussed the issue in an interview last week.

On Friday, Dave Edwards, the Aviation Nation air show director, responded to questions from the Review-Journal about the government’s guidelines for air shows and the prospects for next year’s event at Nellis.

"Right now I’m optimistic," Edwards said. "It’s too big to ignore. There are tremendous local benefits of $18 million to $19 million, which is not a bad return for the $300,000 we use to put on the air show."

The foundation would like to help offset, if not absorb entirely, what the government spends in appropriated funding for the Nellis air show, but Radcliffe said he is "hamstrung" by instructions that the Air Force has issued for open house events at bases.

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Radcliffe would like to see changes in the regulations that would pave the way for the foundation to become a model for private-public partnerships to reduce air show costs and direct the savings in appropriated money to training and mission operations.

Edwards said he sees the foundation as "a very positive model" with "a lot of potential, but since we have the restrictions, we cannot go out and solicit donations for the air show."

The foundation is an independent, non-federal entity registered with the Nevada secretary of state’s office. Radcliffe is preparing to file for nonprofit, tax-exempt status for the foundation that he hopes to have in place for the 2013 air show, too late for this weekend’s Aviation Nation open house at Nellis.

Regardless, in the way of collecting and providing tax-exempt donations either from businesses or the estimated 135,000 spectators who attend the show are government regulations that prohibit selling tickets for events on military bases and put limitations on recognition of donors.

Air Force regulations are spelled out in a 117-page instruction, titled "Conducting Air Force Open Houses," that took five years to produce and approve.

"The primary purpose of an open house is to educate the public, not to raise funds for morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR), non-Federal entities (NFE), or private organizations," according to the first chapter of Maj. Gen. Marke Gibson’s instruction dated Feb. 18, 2010.

Radcliffe said, "If the Air Force can make some changes, that would allow us to defer the costs; it could cut the government’s cost of the air show in half or more."

BIG BUDGET CUTS

By "sequestration," Radcliffe in his earlier comment was referring to automatic federal spending cuts of 18 percent annually for a decade that would take effect in January if Congress and the Obama administration can’t agree on a long-term plan to reduce the nation’s $16 trillion deficit. The across-the-board cuts would be split equally between security and nonsecurity federal programs.

If sequestration is put on hold or abandoned, the Budget Control Act mandates that the Department of Defense still will have to shoulder $487 billion, or 9 percent, in spending cuts over 10 years.

That doesn’t bode well for Air Force demonstration teams, including the Thunderbirds, the main attraction at Aviation Nation, where the team of pilots and ground crew launch red-white-and-blue F-16 Fighting Falcon jets for a daring performance before their home-base crowd.

The shows on Saturday and Sunday will be the last this year on the team’s 34-event schedule, which took them across the continental United States with stops in Alaska and British Columbia, Canada.

Radcliffe and other sources familiar with military air shows say that for the Air Force to weather budget cuts next year, ideas are floating inside Pentagon circles to cancel or alternate the frequency of major Air Force air shows to every other year.

The first major event to make such a move was the Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility near Washington, D.C., which hosts the Joint Services Open House with Armed Forces Day weekend. Organizers announced during this year’s event the move to an every-other-year schedule with their next event scheduled for May 2014.

Already this year, Air Combat Command, citing "significant fiscal constraints," cut five of six air demonstration teams that each fly one type of fighter jet. That leaves only the F-22 Raptor team and the Thunderbirds, while eliminating the F-15E Eagle and both East and West teams for A-10 Thunderbolts and F-16 Fighting Falcon jets.

"Reducing the number of single-ship demonstration teams will allow us to reallocate more than 900 sorties to our wings so they can maximize their flying hours for combat readiness training, offsetting some of the reduction we’ve seen in flying hours," according to an Air Combat Command statement from late 2011.

Another way foundations or commercial enterprises could help is to cover the $20,000 expenditure for portable toilets or the $95,000, two-day cost for transporting spectators to Nellis on more than 60 buses from the nearby Las Vegas Motor Speedway parking lot.

Regulations prohibit Nellis from collecting money to get access to the base.

Edwards said he also can’t use commercial sponsorship money to offset air show expenses because regulations prohibit mixing appropriated funds with nonappropriated funds. Commercial sponsorship money is limited to directly supporting morale, welfare and recreation for airmen.

"If an organization comes to us and says we would like to contribute ‘X’ amount of dollars, but they want to set up a (sponsor’s) tent, well that’s no longer a donation. That’s a contractual commercial-sponsorship arrangement. In return for that money, we are giving them an opportunity to advertise to a captive audience," Edwards said.

LOSING LAS VEGAS

Cutbacks in the budget for Aviation Nation – the largest free public event in Nevada – would translate to losses of millions of dollars that the air show draws to the local economy.

According to the American Airpower Foundation, the air show generated an estimated $19.2 million in economic impact last year based on 135,000 attendees, of which 21,060 were from out of town.

That is an increase of $5 million since 2004, when an estimated 124,100 spectators watched the two-day show.

In 2006, Aviation Nation was named the best military air show in North America by the International Council of Air Shows. That year, 142,700 attended the show on the Nellis ramp, generating $15.5 million for the local economy.

"We want to raise awareness that there might not be future air shows if we don’t find a way to augment funding to defray costs to the government," Radcliffe said.

"Although we see some work ahead of us, we’re excited about working with the Air Force and the community in the months to come to re-establish strong public support for Aviation Nation and ensure it remains as one of the must-see aerial events in America."

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.