Officials press Congress to fund FAA

Local contractors, construction workers and furloughed FAA employees sidelined by an agency budget crisis joined top-ranking federal transportation officials Monday to demand that Congress end a two-week impasse that has halted airport projects and left thousands without work nationwide.

FAA administrator Randy Babbitt and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that with a proposed deal reached on the debt-ceiling issue, Congress must pass an authorization measure to fund the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We need Congress to pass the FAA bill quickly," Babbitt said at a news conference in an American Airlines hangar at LaGuardia. "We need our airport improvement employees, we need our engineers and we need our planners back on the job, so we can get the important work of our national air transportation system done."

The last authorization extension expired July 22, which forced the FAA to furlough 4,000 employees and halt several airport construction projects, including demolition of a decommissioned air-traffic control tower at LaGuardia, and a runway obstruction analysis of Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, officials said. Those deemed "essential" employees, including air traffic controllers, are not affected.

"It's really a travesty, because every week we slow down, every week we've stopped, simply means we delay getting the benefits of those projects," Babbitt said.

About 130 nongovernment jobs at Islip Town airports are on hold due to stopped projects there. The furlough of employees includes 16 in the Garden City district office and six at the New York Air Traffic Control Center at MacArthur.

LaHood had a message for the construction and aviation workers affected on Long Island: "We are working 24/7 to persuade Congress to pass an FAA bill the way they did on 20 other occasions before they go on vacation. All of us are working on that," he said, urging New Yorkers to pressure their congressional representatives.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said she expects a reauthorization bill to pass this week.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D- W.Va.), chairman of the committee that oversees the FAA, said Monday he hopes to bring a bill that will cut even more than what is contained in a Republican-sponsored bill to extend the FAA's operating authority that was passed by the House last month, The Associated Press reported. Senate Democrats have refused to accept the cuts, and Senate Republicans refused to allow passage of an extension bill without them, setting up the shutdown.

Dozens of furloughed workers and their supporters attended the event yesterday.

Gerald Cook, 40, an engineer and technician at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control in Westbury who has been furloughed, said he was anxious to get back to work on an airspace reconfiguration project and security update at TRACON. "It's a stressful situation. Some of us are one-income families," said Cook, of Brooklyn.