Lawmaker, IG worried about FAA funding shortfall

House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf, R-Va., is exploring legislative language to shift funds away from airport construction and toward FAA operations.

At a hearing Wednesday on runway safety, Wolf and subcommittee ranking member Martin Sabo, D-Minn., suggested that operations, including safety programs, would be shortchanged under the so-called AIR-21 bill that recently was passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate.

However, Wolf may face an uphill battle, observers say, if he tries to change the bill. At the hearing, Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead suggested that FAA operations could face up to a $7 billion shortfall, because under AIR-21, funding is not guaranteed for operations in the way it is for airport improvement plans.

"We have repeatedly cautioned that FAA's operations costs need to be contained. This legislation makes that a must. AIR-21 provides only enough trust fund revenue to meet about 65 percent of FAA's operations requirements through fiscal 2003," Mead said.

Wolf is not drafting legislation at this point, but is frustrated by the constraints he feels the appropriators are under due to AIR-21. The money to fund FAA operations may have to come out of other program areas, and it would be difficult to take it out of the Airport Improvement Program because of how AIR-21 is structured.

If Wolf were to raise the issue, congressional sources said, authorizers have an agreement with the House GOP leadership to strike from the floor funding bills that stray from the AIR-21 formula.

Wolf could raise the issue to make a point about the limits placed on appropriators, some sources suggested.

However, a spokesman for House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., said AIR-21 provides appropriators the flexibility they need to earmark enough general revenue funds for FAA operations.

AIR-21 directs money from the aviation trust fund to fully fund AIP, facilities and equipment-but just $4.5 billion of the $6.8 billion the administration is requesting for FAA operations. If Wolf comes up with a plan to rearrange the funding, Shuster would look at it, but "it would likely be soundly defeated," the spokesman said.

At the hearing, Wolf asked FAA what it is doing about runway safety, namely prevention of near-accidents known as incursions. Mead suggested that the FAA give airports an incentive to develop a runway safety plan by linking it to AIP funding.

FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told CongressDaily that the agency has been discussing this issue. The FAA also is developing ways to encourage pilots to report incursions-planning national and regional hearings on the issue-and recently appointed John Mayrhofer as director of the Runway Safety Program Office to give the issue a higher profile, Garvey said.