Hinson: ‘I am absolutely committed to continuing to do town halls’

CEDAR RAPIDS — U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson on Friday met with constituents in Cedar Rapids — not for a town hall but for a tour of the new Kirkwood Community College aviation maintenance technician program for which she helped secure funding in 2023.

“Very clearly, we need aviation maintenance workers, both here in Iowa and around the country,” Hinson told reporters following the hangar tour Friday afternoon. “That was an area that we had addressed very early on in my time in Congress — that we needed to have that pipeline. And what better place to have a training program than right here in Cedar Rapids through Kirkwood.”

During her visit, Hinson did address recent calls she meet with a wider group of constituents in a town hall setting — something U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson recently urged his colleagues to skip, advice U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley ignored last week in Hampton, where he was met by a heated crowd with tough questions.

“I've already done 42 in-person town halls, and I'm doing a telephone town hall next week,” Hinson said Friday. “So I am absolutely committed to continuing to do town halls this Congress. And we're working on continuing to get those scheduled.”

Hinson said people can learn more by subscribing to her newsletter.

“I always put those in our newsletter the week before we do them,” she said.

She also fielded a question about the Signal app group chat that inadvertently disclosed plans for a U.S. military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen to the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

“Clearly there was a mistake made here,” Hinson said after noting, “We need to make sure we have proper platforms for people to communicate.”

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Her biggest concern, she said, is ensuring classified information is communicated in classified settings.

“So we're going to take a look at that and make sure that doesn't happen again,” Hinson said, but added, “at the end of the day, what I care about in this bigger conversation is we were able to take out some terrorists and return and reopen one of the biggest shipping channels in the world.

“That's a really big priority. But we need to be having conversations about how this information is communicated.”

Kirkwood aviation maintenance program has ‘huge waitlist’

Hinson’s Friday tour of The Eastern Iowa Airport hangar that now hosts 24-student cohorts in Kirkwood’s new aviation maintenance technician program was her first since helping to land $360,000 in community project funding to “make this program a reality.”

“So for me to be here and see it come full circle and (become) a program that has taken off and has a huge waitlist, that's exactly what we need in the aviation industry,” Hinson said, pointing to community buy-in via equipment donations from aviation enthusiasts “who really see the benefit of making sure we have that next generation of technicians trained properly.”

“I'm just excited to see that it's happening right here in our backyard,” she said, committing to future advocacy where possible.

“If they come to us and they say, ‘Hey Ashley, our program is bursting at the seams and we'd like to continue to expand,’ I'm always willing to take a look at something that's delivering a good investment for taxpayers, which clearly, in this place, it is,” she said.

The new Kirkwood program welcomed its first 24 students in August 2023 — graduating them in 15 months in December 2024. By that time, a second group had started — with expectations to earn their diploma by the end of this year.

The capped cohort for the 2025-26 program already is full, according to Kirkwood Student Recruitment and Retention Specialist Sarah Dollmeyer.

“So it’s full of the 24 students and then we have a waitlist of 17,” she said.

Jacob McCoid, 19, of Cedar Rapids, is among this year’s Kirkwood aviation maintenance students and was on hand Friday to show Hinson around. Initially, McCoid said he wanted to be a pilot — but didn’t necessarily like the time and expense involved.

“I wouldn’t be home as much,” he said. “So this is the route I chose.”

With some in the first cohort securing jobs immediately after graduating, instructor Tom Lueck said the demand is high as the need is growing.

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“There's a huge shortage for mechanics, as well as pilots,” he said. “In our travels, when we were collecting equipment and supplies for this program, we had several businesses ask to hire us. They asked if we were looking for work.

“Everybody's looking for mechanics right now,” he said. “So this couldn't have been started at a better time.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com