Thursday, September 17, 2009

DiBello selected Space Florida president

Frank DiBello became president of Space Florida after being confirmed today during a special board of directors teleconference.

The selection committee favorite, former NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale, withdrew from the running Wednesday, as Brevard County officials expressed outrage that DiBello was not the first choice.

DiBello became interim president May 18, replacing Steve Kohler, who was appointed in 2006 and resigned May 8 after a controversy over several questionable contracts. Kohler formerly worked for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and had little space industry experience. DiBello was the runner up when Kohler was chosen.

Before President Bush appointed Dale to NASA in 2005, she served in the Bush White House. She resigned her NASA post shortly before President Obama took office.

Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp chaired the teleconference and said, "We've picked an outstanding person."

DiBello was approved unanimously.

"It was greatly reassuring to the space community to have the lieutenant governor move so quickly to resolve this distraction for Florida. Thanks to his leadership we can now get back to the business of growing Space jobs in this state," Dale Ketcham, director of the Spaceport Research & Technology Institute at Kennedy Space Center, said.

DiBello said he hoped to replace the 7,000 jobs lost to shuttle retirement with diversified space industry jobs from a variety of high-tech and commercial space industries.

"We're not going to replace that watermelon-sized volume of jobs with another watermelon," DiBello said.

7 comments:

Jeff S. said...

Great!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!!!! It took some time but they finally got it right.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Lt Gov Kottcamp for your leadership in this. Thanks also to Mr. Walker for seconding the nomination. As for the selection committee...the right person got the job in spite of you.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!!! They finally got some brains.

Anonymous said...

Yeah...they elected the Brides Maid after they tried and failed to get an unqualified, non-resident, former Shrubette...that's Repugnant Florida for you!

LOL!

Rubber Ducky said...

Someone please explain the watermelon analogy...

Anonymous said...

Watermelon meaning that the shuttle program is one large industry. 7,000 new jobs spread out over several different types of industry instead of a new large one is what Mr. DiBello is talking about.