B/CA Show News - NBAA 2007 - September 27, 2007 - (Page 14)

N B A A 2 0 07 The User Fee Fight—”It’s Not Over”—Bolen NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen, joined by AOPA’s Phil Boyer and Selena Shilad, executive director of the Alliance for Aviation Across America, took to the podium for a panel on the fight by general aviation to resist user fees. Bolen reminded everyone present that the current campaign to pillage the pockets of business aviation was formally and publicly launched by the airlines at a press conference on March 8, 2006. In the roughly 18 months since, Roll Call, the respected Capitol Hill newspaper, estimates the airlines’ lobbying effort has spent some $11.2 million to get its message across and win hearts and minds, not just in Congress, but among the general public. The goal of the campaign, according to all three gathered advocates, is to shift up to $2 billion in taxes from the airlines to business aviation, and gain control of the air traffic control apparatus in the U.S., eventually squeezing out the use of private and company aircraft. Bolen said the attack is threepronged: Vilify general aviation as “fat cats” and “bigwigs” who crowd airport runways with tycoons off to play golf; divide and conquer by suggesting to the AOPA that it was just NBAA members the airlines were targeting; and to distort the truth in a flurry of advertising that has appeared everywhere from airports to seat-pocket magazines. The AOPA isn’t buying, said Boyer. “We looked at user fees elsewhere, and they don’t work,” he said. Furthermore, he pointed out that 57,000 of AOPA’s more than 400,000 members fly turbine aircraft that put them squarely in the sights of the airlines. His organization has asked members to target their own government representatives. “We’re not trying to get the [entire mass of] American people to understand,” he said, calling the problem too complex and too big for the average person to understand. Shilad claims 3,616 member organizations under the AAAA banner, and those figures are growing. Within the list are agricultural and rural or small town interest groups together with unexpected allies such as sections of the coal industry. She cited successes in targeting media and government to get the message across. Now that the House has approved H.R. 2881 as a user-fee-free bill, attention now turns to the Senate version, which is volatile. With funding authority for aviation due to expire on September 30, a conference committee won’t have much time to iron out differences. An extension similar to a continuing resolution could push the date out to December. Meanwhile, Bolen says the airline attack will be relentless. “It’s not about to go away now,” he said. “The fight is on. The fight is now.” NBAA’s Ed Bolen battles on users fees, backed by AOPA’s Phil Boyer (inset). Over the Back Fence: Politics of User Fees Is it all a battle on Capitol Hill, or is the Bush fees just sound a little more palatable administration involved in the user fee fight? That [than taxes],” says Bolen. But Bolen goes on to point out question, coming at the very end of the panel discussion on user fees at Wednesday’s NBAA that any user fee is inevitably convention site, contained some of the more based on the weight of the interesting insights into what’s going on up on aircraft and the distance traveled. And what is the most Capitol Hill. Excise taxes pay 80% of the cost of running direct measure of those two facthe FAA and managing the aviation infra- tors combined? Fuel burn, he structure, with the remaining 20% coming says, which is why a fuel tax—direct, from the general fund, says NBAA’s CEO, easy to collect, preferable to fees and the billing they would mandate— Ed Bolen. The administramakes sense. tion wants to be able to point “User fees just AOPA’s Boyer sees a starker to spending reductions as a sound a little picture. “What you’re really counterbalance to controseeing is a Republican adminisversial tax cuts that even more palatable tration opposing a Democratic Alan Greenspan decries, so [than taxes],” Congress,” he says. Swallowing the meat cleaver is directed —NBAA president and hard, he depicts the administraat the portion that comes CEO Ed Bolen tion as being “not extremely from general fund. “User 14 pro-labor” and points to the House bill, which, while raising no prospect of user fees, tips its hat to organized labor with language that would undo the pay contract forced upon air traffic controllers when the Marion Blakey-led FAA resisted the controllers’ wage demands. The Clinton White House, with Jane Garvey running the FAA, had granted the controllers whopping pay boosts that came in for criticism later as a sop to labor. Now the Democrat Congress would use the current FAA funding bill to nullify the current contract enforced, by law, through a Republican Congress during the build-up to an election. The Bush White House is responding with carefully worded messages, says Boyer: “The President’s advisors may recommend a veto ” but does not say Bush will veto such a bill. September 27, 2007 www.aviationweek.com/shownews http://www.aviationweek.com/shownews

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Why Buy Columbia? Too Much of a Good Thing? The User Fee Fracas Big Toys for Big Boys Honeywell for RNP High Miles Air Taxi Bombardier at Your Service NARA Names Officers Learjet’s Racier Image ILA 2008 in Berlin Gulfstream Hangar Opens Anti-Runway Incursions Like ReallyLarge Cabins? Sentient-Jet Direct

B/CA Show News - NBAA 2007 - September 27, 2007

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