El Paso County is boosting spending this year on federal lobbying focused on keeping U.S. Space Command from moving to Huntsville, Ala. in 2026. 

The county spent about $33,000 on a partial year of federal lobbying to retain the command last year and voted Tuesday to spend $50,400 this year as part of an annual contract with Potomac Partners totaling $150,000, county documents show. The firm is a Washington D.C.-based company that represents other local governments.

El Paso County commission Chairman Stan VanderWerf said he felt the community’s efforts to retain the command – including work by the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs Chamber and Economic Development Corporation and the state’s federal delegation – is competitive with Huntsville’s efforts to attract the command. Federal records show both communities are spending on federal lobbyists. 

The future of the command’s long-term home is uncertain and under investigation by the Pentagon’s Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office.

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Former President Donald Trump said he single-handedly named Huntsville as the future home of Space Command on a radio show in August, contradicting Pentagon statements that Huntsville was picked by a process that fairly evaluated Colorado Springs and other communities on their merits. 

While the investigations have not been completed, that has not stopped the communities that could benefit from the economic powerhouse of the command from making their case to legislators. 

The command – which oversees military missions in space for all armed services – employs 1,400 military and civilian personnel and pumps more than $450 million a year into the state’s economy, the Gazette reported previously. 

In addition to county spending, the city of Colorado Springs spent $70,000 with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to lobby on Space Command issues during the second half of 2021, according to Open Secrets, a database that compiles lobbying reports to the U.S. Senate. The city could not say how much it has budgeted specifically for Space Command lobbying this year. 

The chamber did not hire a federal lobbyist to work on these issues, although it has been collaborating closely with the city and county, said Andrea Mensink, a spokeswoman for the chamber.

Huntsville spent $60,000 last year on lobbying efforts through Washington D.C. firm 535 Strategies that included work on defense issues and other priorities. The filings did not mention Space Command specifically, unlike Colorado Springs filings. The lobbyists working for Huntsville include former U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer and former Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Rebecca Halkias, according to a ProPublica database that relies on filings to the U.S. House of Representatives and Secretary of the Senate. 

Since the announcement about Space Command leaving, Colorado Springs has had wins in the efforts to keep the command, VanderWerf said, noting that U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn successfully backed efforts to block funding that could have put the move to Huntsville in motion. Representatives of the community have also had 20 meetings with federal representatives, senators and their staff members over two trips last year to make the community’s case.

The move to Huntsville doesn’t make economic sense because it could cost billions, including training, building new facilities and putting in secure communication infrastructure in Huntsville, he said.  

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A new command building in Huntsville could cost $1.2 billion and rebuilding specialized communications infrastructure could cost $2 to $3 billion, said Jamie Fabos, a Colorado Springs city spokeswoman. The cost of the communications infrastructure was not considered in the cost analysis when the decision was first made, she said. 

Colorado Springs ranked low in some logical areas, such as the high cost of housing, according to an Air Force document dated February 2021.  The housing problem has continued to worsen since then. 

Fabos said the communities’ high cost of living are an indication of the area’s “desirability and ability to attract and maintain a qualified workforce.”

While it’s unknown when a decision might be reached, the uncertainty is not hurting the defense contracting industry in town, Mensink said. 

“Our assessment is that it has not hampered industry growth in Colorado Springs and El Paso County, with Northrop Grumman, The Aerospace Corporation, Bluestaq, and others growing here, as well as development at Peak Innovation Park. National defense firms see value in our homegrown companies,” she said.