WASHINGTON — Dozens of airport construction projects across the country are on hold and thousands of federal employees are not working because Congress failed to pass legislation to keep the Federal Aviation Administration operating, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday.
The FAA’s operating authority expired at midnight Friday, forcing a partial agency shutdown. Dozens of stop-work orders were issued over the weekend for projects to build and modernize airport control towers, as well as other improvement projects, officials said. Many of the airport projects are designed to improve the efficiency of air travel and reduce congestion.
“Because Congress didn’t do its work, FAA programs and thousands of public- and private-sector jobs are in jeopardy,” LaHood told reporters in a conference call.
He called on lawmakers to quickly pass legislation to restart shuttered operations.
But all indications Monday pointed to a prolonged shutdown. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said there are no negotiations between the House and Senate to resolve the dispute, and House Republican leaders are determined to hold their position.
“I have no idea when we’ll open the FAA again,” he said.
Air-traffic controllers have remained on the job, as well as FAA employees who inspect the safety of planes and test pilots. But airlines’ authority to collect federal ticket taxes has expired, costing the FAA about $30 million a day in lost revenue, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said.
That money goes into an aviation trust fund. The fund “has a healthy balance now, but that would be depleted in fairly rapid order” without congressional action, he said.
Nearly 4,000 FAA employees in 35 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico who are paid from the trust fund have been furloughed.
About $2.5 billion in federal airport construction grants cannot be processed because workers who handle those grants have been furloughed, officials said. That, in turn, has halted construction projects, putting hundreds of other people employed by those jobs out of work.
