[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[March 23, 1994]
[Pages 527-528]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Teleconference Announcing a Defense Diversification Grant for 
Charleston, South Carolina
March 23, 1994

    The President. Mayor?
    Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Mr. President.
    The President. How are you doing, Mayor?
    Mayor Riley. Well, I'm doing fine. How are you?
    The President. I'm great. Nice to hear your voice.
    Mayor Riley. Well, it's great to hear yours. And we're pulling for 
you, and just keep fighting and working hard. We're in your corner. And 
thanks for all the tremendous cooperation we've been getting from the 
administration with our reconversion efforts. It's been terrific.
    The President. Well, thank you. As you know, I'm calling you with 
some good news today. The Secretary of Labor, Bob Reich, is awarding $15 
million in defense diversification program funds to the Charleston 
County Employment and Training Administration.
    Mayor Riley. Well, that's wonderful.
    The President. We hope it will help to retrain about 1,920 people 
who are being laid off from your naval complex there.
    Mayor Riley. Well, Mr. President, that's great news, and it will be 
a huge help. We've got great workers with great skills. They will be 
making a career change, and to get the training to move from one career 
to another is essential. And this is terrific news for the Charleston 
community; it really is.
    The President. Well, I just want to say again to you what you and I 
have already talked about so many times privately, and that is that I'm 
committed not just to training and preparing those folks for other 
careers but seeing to it that the base facilities themselves are 
successfully redeveloped. And I know that your BEST committee is 
aggressively moving forward with redevelopment planning. And I commend 
you for that, and I just want to tell you so you can tell them that I 
am, personally, and this whole administration is committed to working 
with them and making the best use of those enormously important 
facilities there.
    Mayor Riley. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you, Mr. President. We 
have a great committee. They've done a terrific job and I want you to 
know, from the people in your White House, Secretary Perry on down, the 
response couldn't be better and more enthusiastic and supportive.

[[Page 528]]

And as I told you in our private conversation, our goal--and told 
Secretary Perry--is to make Charleston a model that you can point to of 
where a major reconversion occurred and occurred successfully.
    The President. Well, I know Secretary Perry and the Navy Secretary, 
John Dalton, have been down there, and I know that the Department of 
Defense Office of Economic Adjustment has already provided about $2 
million in planning grants. But we want to keep going, and we want to 
assist those workers as they begin their transition to new careers. And 
I think you've already got a transition assistance center open on the 
base.
    Mayor Riley. We do, yes, sir, a very fine one.
    The President.  So we now will be able to provide with today's grant 
the full array of services through that one-stop career center there, 
including counseling and basic skills remediation and occupational 
skills training and other kinds of things that we believe will really 
help to get people new jobs, and hopefully as good or better than the 
ones they're losing. We're going to do the very best we can on that.
    Mayor Riley. It's going to be a huge help, and we are going to make 
Charleston a model, one that you can proudly point to.
    The President. You can do it. I know you can. We'll do whatever we 
can to work with you.
    Mayor Riley. Well, thank you. Thanks for everything.
    The President.  Tell everybody in Charleston I said hello. I always 
love coming there, and I hope I get to come again soon.
    Mayor Riley. Well, I will. Somebody just a couple of weeks ago gave 
me a picture of you and I talking on January 1st, 1992.
    The President. It was the first stop I made in the new year, 1992.
    Mayor Riley. That's right. Well, I've got a picture of us chatting. 
I was doing the talking, and they subtitled it, ``Low country advice.'' 
[Laughter]
    The President. Well, it was pretty high-brow advice from the low 
country, I'll tell you that.
    Mayor Riley. Well, it was heartfelt, and we're very proud of you.
    The President.  Good luck to you.
    Mayor Riley. Thanks for all your help.
    The President. Thanks, bye.

Note: The President spoke at 10:44 a.m. from the Oval Office at the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to the Building Economic 
Solutions Together (BEST) committee on redevelopment of the Charleston 
naval complex.