Skift Take
Really a shame that the stalled machinery of our government won't consider AIP as part of its cuts.
As budget cuts force the Federal Aviation Administration to carve chunks out of the nation's air traffic control system, the agency cannot touch a program that allocated $17.9 million for airport improvements on the Pacific island of Saipan. Or $9.4 million for soundproofing two elementary schools near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
Those projects are exempt from the federally mandated budget cuts known as sequestration because they are part of the Airport Improvement Program that in 2012 designated more than $3 billion for projects around the globe, from $23 million for a new airport in Kaktovik, Alaska (population 239), to tens of millions of dollars for projects at airports in, yes, Wisconsin. The Airport Improvement Program was not included among the sequestration cuts.
Yet, now air traffic controllers are being furloughed and 149 control towers, including eight in Wisconsin, are being closed -- compromising air safety, some airport officials say.
The situation gets to the heart of the difficulty of cleaning up the nation's fiscal mess: One person's spending boondoggle is a crucial piece of someone else's safety, quality of life or economic well-being.
"We've met the enemy and it's us," said Jeff Baum, CEO of Wisconsin Aviation, based in Watertown, who is also a pilot and vice chairman of the Air Charter Safety Foundation. "We want everything and we don't want to pay for it."
Says economist David J. Ward of NorthStar Consulting Group in Madison: "It's not like everybody can look around and say it's somebody else's fault. The public has to decide which way we are going.
"In the last election, we decided to put the current (Democratic) administration back in the White House and the Republicans back in control of the House. That must mean some
