Legislative Support For A Pressing Problem May Be At Hand

House Transportation Committee leaders have finally introduced long overdue long term legislation to reform and fund FAA policies and priorities. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL), Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Tom Petri (R-WI) and other members introduce the FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011 (HR 658).

Included in both the House and Senate versions of this bill is language created by Representative Sam Graves (R-MO) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) which forbids the FAA from stating that an airport is, "in violation of a grant assurance…solely because the sponsor enters into an agreement that grants to a person that owns residential real property to adjacent to the airport access to the airfield…" The section which addresses the RTTF issue is 136.

"This insertion of the RTTF language into the reauthorization bill will hopefully end the FAA's factually unsupported and misguided attempt to ban residential through the fence activity" stated Brent Blue, organizer of www.throughthefence.org, a website for dissemination of information about this issue. "We owe a great deal of thanks to Congressman Graves and Senator Wyden for helping stop the FAA illogical stance."

The FAA Reauthorization bill is expected to pass this year after many temporary extensions because most of the controversial provisions have been removed from this year's language.

FMI: www.throughthefence.org