President May Kill Legislation That Includes Contract Deal
And you thought the battle over user fees was volatile before.
With Thursday's passage of the House version of the FAA
Reauthorization Bill by the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee, comes the potential for renewed confrontation between
general aviation pilots, the FAA, and air traffic controllers.
As ANN reported, lawmakers
voted to add two amendments during Thursday's drafting session for
H.R. 2881. One of those additions, dubbed the Costello Amendment,
would roll back the contract the FAA imposed on controllers in
2006, after both sides declared an impasse in contract talks.
Under the House plan, both sides would once again be sent back
to the bargaining table for 45 days. If (when?) those talks failed
to produce results, both sides would go before binding
arbitration.
In the interim, the bill
would also revert the controllers' contract to the more lucrative
terms they enjoyed under a deal reached in 1998, according to the
Washington Post.
And therein lies the problem. Despite the support controllers
have in the House, many lawmakers fear the rollback provision would
throw open the doors to other federal workers, protesting their own
pay and benefits.
Moments after the committee's 53 to 16 vote on the measure,
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters issued a statement, reminding
all parties the White House has already threatened to veto any bill
that rolls back controller pay.
Peters also said the FAA and the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association had been in talks for the past 12 days, but
the union rejected the FAA package she said offered controllers "a
substantial financial settlement."
NATCA President Patrick Forrey called the House measure an
"important step toward putting fairness back into the collective
bargaining process."
"The FAA unilaterally imposed work and pay rules on controllers
last Labor Day weekend, exacerbating a critical staffing shortage
that even the Department of Transportation Inspector General
validated in a recent report," Forrey added. "Morale has suffered,
and the mass exodus has left controllers working for longer periods
of time, causing fatigue and loss of focus, which the NTSB has said
is a major safety concern."
Several GA groups hailed the House bill, which calls for
increased charges for airman certification and aircraft
registration, as well as a bump in fuel taxes. What it doesn't
include are new "user fees," as proposed by the FAA... and that's
what has the letter groups happy.
The bill now faces additional scrutiny in the House, where it's
likely to undergo a series of changes before coming to a full vote
next month. And then there's the process of integrating the House
measure with the Senate's proposal.
Even then, proponents warn, the measure could be killed by a
presidential veto. In the words of Florida Representative John
Mica, the committee's ranking Republican member, the contract
amendment is a "showstopper."
"It's the poison pill that can kill FAA reauthorization," he
added.