WASHINGTON, D.C. – Idaho Senator Larry Craig today said that he has received assurances from the U.S. Air Force that the construction of a new Logistics Readiness Center at Mountain Home Air Force Base will be in the Air Force budget for fiscal year 2010. 

The commitment came during a budget hearing Craig called attention to the dire conditions of the Base’s Logistics Readiness Center, which was condemned in the late 1990s.

Kathleen Ferguson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Installations, told Craig and the Committee, “We have funded and begun the design for the replacement facility at Mountain Home.  It is ongoing right now and will be 35 percent designed in October.  The cost for the replacement facility is about $20 million, and we anticipate that it will be in our FY10 submission to the Congress.”

“For the last five years, the Idaho congressional delegation has suggested that this Center become a top priority for this facility,” Craig told Ferguson.  “It used to house at least seven base activities which we’ve had to move.  The people who work in this building now have to wear hard hats for fear of something falling on them.  And yet this building is still operable until it gets four inches of snow on it, and we have to evacuate everybody for risk of the roof falling in.