Aviation bill could aid Palmdale airport access

The tax, added flights and the Highway 138 provision are all part of a $40 billion aviation bill the House passed with a 319-101 vote Wednesday.

Congressman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, who represents the Antelope Valley, voted for the bill, which now heads to the president's desk for his signature.

"I am happy to join my colleagues in approving legislation that includes language authorizing Los Angeles World Airports to grant an easement for Caltrans in order to build the State Route 138 bypass. This federal authorization is a necessary step toward building the highway and promoting Palmdale Regional Airport."

McKeon was responsible for the revision of the aviation bill, which calls for an easement necessary for a proposed State Route 138 bypass through Palmdale.

Federal permission was necessary for the easement because the city of Los Angeles used federal airport funds to purchase the land. Los Angeles spent $100 million in the 1960s to purchase 17,000 acres of land for a future Palmdale International Airport. Although plans for a major international airport have since been abandoned, officials in Palmdale and Los Angeles hope to expand the now-dormant regional airport.

"This is a significant step toward expanding Palmdale Regional Airport," McKeon said after announcing the revision to House Resolution 1000, the Air Transportation Improvement Act. "I have worked for years with officials in Palmdale, Caltrans and the city of Los Angeles to get federal permission for this highway easement.

"Once this legislation is signed into law, a major hurdle for improved access to Palmdale Regional Airport will have been removed.

"We still have a long way to go toward expanding Palmdale Airport," McKeon added last week. "Expansion will take a major commitment of resources by Los Angeles World Airports to market Palmdale's convenience and resources, as well as improving its facilities. But I'm happy that it appears the federal easement issue will soon be taken off the table."

The aviation bill, with air passengers expected to grow from 600 million last year to more than 1 billion by the end of the decade, also authorizes the Federal Aviation Administration for another three years and paves the way for major boosts in spending.

President Bill Clinton reportedly supports the Measure, approved last week by the Senate last week.

"The greatest aviation system in the world is hurtling toward gridlock and potential catastrophes in our skies," said House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., who stressed that his bill "will make those skies safer, reduce flight delays and increase competition."

The bill would increase aviation spending in fiscal 2001 to $12.7 billion, up $2.7 billion from this year.

Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater said the measure would "expand capacity and improve the efficiency of the system to meet the air travel needs of the 21st century."

But the bill met strong opposition from New York-, Chicago- and Washington-area lawmakers unhappy with the prospects of more flights out of their local airports.

The legislation phases out by 2007 flight limits at New York's LaGuardia and Kennedy airports. These "high density rules" would end at Chicago's O'Hare in 2002, and flights from Washington's Reagan National could increase by 24 a day, with 12 of those flights to destinations beyond the current 1,250-mile "perimeter rule."

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who represents a Chicago-area district, said adding flights would "help create massive gridlock and delays at O'Hare and across the nation." O'Hare, he said, "is an accident waiting to happen. It's only a matter of time before this increased jamming of flights results in a disaster."

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said that in 1986 Congress "made an ironclad commitment that it would never increase the number of slots at Washington National. ... We ought not set a tradition of breaking promises."

But lawmakers from outside the big cities saw the issue differently. A roundtrip ticket from Rochester to Chicago now costs $1,200, said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. "The major carriers have a stranglehold on these slots, effectively preventing low-cost carriers from entering the market."

The top Democrat on the Transportation Committee, Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, said that "under no circumstance will the FAA allow more departures or arrivals than controllers can safely manage."

The bill would allow airports to raise the ceiling for passenger taxes from the current $3 to $4.50 a person. That could bring in an extra $700 million a year for local improvements if all airports imposed the increase.

Shuster said giving local authorities control over the "passenger facility charge" was good conservative policy, but Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said many will see this as a Republican-backed tax increase. "I'm not sure this Congress wants to be on record as increasing taxes."

Young's Democratic counterpart on the appropriations panel, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, also opposed the measure, saying Shuster's ability to corral more money for aviation meant less money for other programs. An extra $1 billion for aviation, he said, means $1 billion less for cancer research, or special education, or renovation of schools.

The House and Senate both passed FAA bills last year, but were unable to reach a compromise over Shuster's demand that the Aviation Trust Fund, which takes in some $10 billion a year in user fees, be separated from the general federal budget and its revenues be used exclusively for airport projects.

The Senate wouldn't go along but finally agreed to a compromise where spending on airports every year would at least equal revenues and interest from the fund.

The bill seeks to aid small-market airports by doubling minimum funding to $1 million a year and helping airlines buy regional jets if they agree to use them to serve small airports.

It requires new criminal background checks and training for airport security personnel and amends a 1920 law that bars families of those lost in air disasters at sea - such as the 1996 TWA 800 crash that killed 230 people - from collecting damages, except for "economic damages."