“There’s no part of our operation that government can’t find a way to improve.”

TEMPE — Echoing Doug Parker’s plea for the government to “do no harm” to the airline industry, C. A. Howlett, US Airways’ top government affairs officer, outlined the challenges the industry — and US Airways in particular — face in the policy environment. His primary focus was the pending FAA reauthorization bill. Put off since 2007, the bill has been passed by the House but no action has been taken in the Senate. “We will maybe get this in calendar year 2009 but no one is betting anything heavy on that particular forecast,” he quipped.

Howlett is in no rush to get the House bill passed, because it has several provisions that give US Airways and other airlines pause. The bill increases the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) from $4.50 to $7.00. PFCs are used to fund airport improvements but are levied by airlines when passengers buy tickets. This, Howlett said, would add $2 billion to the airline industry’s costs. “Airports have the ability to raise revenues by raising our landing fees and charges,” he added. “Not all airports are the same. . . . [Raising landing fees is]a better way to finance projects.” Besides, he said, airports got $1.1 billion in the stimulus bill, plus $1 billion for security improvements.

Also of concern in the House’s FAA bill are labor issues regarding collective bargaining procedures, the passenger’s bill of rights provisions, and limitations on foreign repair stations. Howlett said that there is a provision inserted at the behest of the firefighters’ union that would cost US Airways alone $15 million per year at their hubs.

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What Ray LaHood has in common with Rod Blagojevich

. . . besides being an Illinoisan. From John Kass at the Chicago Tribune comes this dispiriting item about Obama’s DOT nominee Ray LaHood:

Obama selected outgoing Illinois U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Combine) for the post of secretary of transportation, putting LaHood in charge of Obama’s planned trillion-dollar public works bonanza being sold as a jobs bill.

“Every dollar that we spend, we want it spent on projects that are there, not because of politics, but because they’re good for the American people,” Obama said. “If we’re building a road, it better not be a road to nowhere.”

Not because of politics? What does the great reformer take us for, a bunch of chumbolones?

What Obama forgot to mention is that with LaHood in charge of the roads, they’ll lead to one place:

Bill Cellini.

Cellini, the Republican boss of Springfield who has been indicted in the Blagojevich scandal for allegedly shaking down the producer of the movie “Million Dollar Baby,” is a strong LaHood ally. Cellini runs Sangamon County, and LaHood has enjoyed Cellini’s political support.

They also joined to help oust the last true reformer in Illinois politics, former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, the Republican who was denied an endorsement from his own state party after he brought federal prosecutors to Illinois with no connection to the bipartisan Combine that runs things here.

Republican money man Cellini is not only the Chicago political connection to machine Democrats and Mayor Richard Daley‘s City Hall—and a Blagojevich fundraiser—he’s also the boss of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association.

H/T: Frum

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LaHood’s legislative record on aviation

One of the surprises about the rumored Ray LaHood nomination for secretary of transportation — set to be announced tomorrow — is that he has so little transportation experience. He is on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and would thus be well positioned to oversee Barack Obama’s planned burst of infrastructure spending. LaHood did serve on the Aviation Subcommittee back in the late 1990s, and during that time, he cosponsored — which, in Congress, usually means you slapped your name on the bill for some political reason — several aviation-related pieces of legislation:

• Federal Aviation Administration Revitalization Act of 1995 (HR 2276, 104th Cong.). This legislation would have made the FAA an independent agency no longer under the authority of the DOT, although DOT approval would have been required for FAA rulemaking. Also gutted the aviation staffers at DOT who report to the secretary. This legislation passed the house in 1996 before stalling in a Senate committee.
• Airline Passenger Safety Act of 1996 (HR 3618, 104th Cong.). Prohibits chemical oxygen generators from being transported by aircraft. Went nowhere in the House.
• Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act of 1996 (HR 3923, 104th Cong.). Requires the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates airplane crashes, to appoint a liaison for families of plane-crash victims and name a national nonprofit to handle post-crash care for victims’ families. Also requires airlines to submit plans for their dealings with victims’ families and urges state bar associations to forbid their ambulance-chasing members from contacting victims’ families for thirty days. Passed by House; not taken up in the Senate.
• HR 2252, 105th Cong., directs the transportation secretary to retaliate against foreign countries that violate air service agreements with the U.S. with respect to cargo carriers. Hearings were held.
• Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century (HR 1000, 106th Cong.). The FAA reauthorization bill.
• HR 4529, 106th Cong., which amends federal aviation law to prevent people with criminal convictions that “indicate a propensity for placing contraband aboard an aircraft in return for money” from holding aviation-security jobs. No action.
• Small Airport Safety, Security, and Air Service Improvement Act of 2002 (HR 1979, 107th Cong.). This bill, which never made it past the Senate, would have provided funding for construction of control towers and installation of equipment.

Interestingly, LaHood voted “no” on the 2007 FAA Reauthorization Act — the as yet incomplete FAA legislation. The House’s version, spearheaded by Rep. James Oberstart (D-Minn.) did not include a provision for user fees for air traffic control services, unlike the Senate version that saw the two houses at loggerheads. Why did LaHood join most Republicans in voting no? I’ll try to find out.

LaHood is an Arab-American (of Lebanese and Jordanian descent). In 1998, he vociferously opposed the use of profiling in rooting out potential terrorists or hijackers. He insisted that screening systems be entirely non-discriminatory.

Adrian Schofield offers a couple of notes over at Things with Wings. One may be related to one of the bills above and involves a vigorous response on international air services agreements. The other places him in opposition to FAA commercialization or restructuring in 1995.

Now, the secretary of transportation works on more than aviation. But the FAA is the largest subagency within DOT, and LaHood’s aviation record is pretty thin on the ground.

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Ray LaHood nomination would mean short shrift for DOT

I’ve got a busy morning, so more on Ray LaHood’s transportation (and especially aviation) record soon, but I’ll just say that the likely appointment of retiring Republican congressman Ray LaHood as secretary of transportation seems to indicate that Barack Obama does not plan to devote a great deal of attention to transportation issues — much like our current president, whose cabinet’s token Democrat was also at DOT.

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Getting our “infrastructure” priorities straight

It’s pretty common knowledge that the United States has for years underinvested in “infrastructure” — from the power grid to physical plants to transportation — and thus one of the first priorities of the next administration should be to devote massive resources to repairing infrastructure. And I’m sure the commuter inching forward on a Dallas interstate on his way home from work or a passenger on a regional jet at LaGuardia groaning as yet another thirty-minute delay is announced would agree. And Barack Obama has endorsed a massive infrastructure spending program in hopes of stimulating the economy. So then — let’s get busy! Where to start?

As Bob Poole writes in yesterday’s WSJ, the mayors of 427 cities have helpfully identified more than 11,000 “ready-to-go” infrastructure projects worth $73 billion. Okay, there’s a start. And what kind of projects are these? Poole lays out several of them: a “waterfront duck pond park,” community centers, tennis centers, “life style centers,” a “Grand Central Station” in San Francisco for a rail line that doesn’t exist, and the like. (More “infrastructure priorities are listed here.) That is, the mayors have, in a recession and what is widely acknowledged as a crisis in infrastructure, presented the taxpayers with a gold-plated wish list. No doubt Congress would be happy to pony up the money in exchange for naming rights.

Why are these projects even on the list? For several reasons. First, they’re discrete and local. Highway, airport, and major transit projects often require consultation with and the involvement of multiple authorities, making it harder for the spending to have a quick impact — even if its long-term effect would outweigh that of a duck pond by a factor of, oh, infinity. Another reason might be the “spaghetti” approach: throw it at the wall to see if it sticks. No harm in trying, right? ask the mayors. (No harm, indeed, except perhaps the derision of a few lowly bloggers.)

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Reason: keep Mary Peters at DOT

Shikha Dalmia, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, an L.A.-based think thank that sets itself apart in the right-of-center policy community by focusing on transportation, offers a libertarian perspective on the best and worst cabinet appointees that Barack Obama might choose at the Department of Transportation.

Mary Peters

Dalmia writes that one of the top priorities of the next transportation secretary should be to speed up the NextGen transformation by “extricating air traffic control operations from the Federal Aviation Administration’s bureaucratic shackles and spinning them off as a separate ‘company’ with the authority to fund the $25 billion revamp through revenue bonds paid by user fees.”

The candidate who is best suited for this job is, in fact, the current Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters. She began her term in 2006 and since then she has repeatedly drawn attention to the imminent bankruptcy of the National Highway Trust Fund and the need, therefore, to explore leasing arrangements with private companies to build new toll roads and to implement congestion pricing — an idea that Obama has praised — in our most-congested urban areas as well as airports. . . . Peters has proven herself to be an able administrator. More to the point, she would offer creative and sensible ways for Obama to deliver on his idea of using infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy without burdening taxpayers.

Dalmia’s “second-tier picks” include Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Clinton-era deputy transportation secretary Mort Downey, and San Francisco Bay Area transportation commission director Steve Heminger. Unlike Peters, the latter two are thought to be on Obama’s shortlist. Dalmia also mentions some positives about former FAA administrator Jane Garvey, who has apparently made favorable noises on highway pricing. But Dalmia writes that “she starved the air traffic system of funding, partly because she didn’t have the gumption to standup to the demands for a sweetheart contract by the controllers’ union.”

And Dalmia’s worst options: Representatives Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). “They routinely advocate spending gas tax revenues on everything but highways and are huge champions of mass transit, regardless of a project’s effectiveness. Oberstar, a bike enthusiast, is arguably the worse of the two because he also has a taste for larding highway pork on favored constituencies. . . . Oberstar would be a great friend of the decrepit transportation status-quo, something that America’s economy can ill afford.”

Obama’s Cabinet: Hoping for an Empirical Presidency [Reason Foundation]

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A pilot’s take on Duane Woerth rumors

Duane Woerth

There’s a lot of virtual ink being spilled in the blogosphere about Obama’s shortlist for FAA administrator. Some of those rumored to be under consideration include Representative Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee; Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.); Clinton-era FAA chief Jane Garvey;  Robert Herbert, an aide to Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Boeing executive Neil Planzer, and former Air Line Pilots Association president Duane Woerth. Regarding the latter, the Wall Street Journal‘s Middle Seat Terminal blog has this to say:

Woerth . . . has met with House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar and has his tentative support, according to people familiar with their discussions. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who heads an aviation subcommittee, is slated to meet with Woerth in the next few days. . . .

Still, the Journal reports that Woerth has the strong backing of various unions seeking to cash in political capital for their aggressive support of Obama’s candidacy. But Woerth, who frequently prodded the agency to step up air-safety efforts, also has garnered bipartisan endorsements on Capitol Hill and enjoys the backing of some aircraft makers and airline-industry officials.

I called a airline pilot friend and ALPA member at one of the nation’s largest airlines to get his impressions. This pilot  thought Woerth did an “OK” job as head of ALPA. My source especially praised Woerth’s handling of the critical time surrounding the September 11 attacks: “He was head of ALPA during 9/11. He had a huge amount dumped on his plate with the tremendous challenges to the industry” — including persuading pilot groups to make wage and benefit concessions in attempts to save their airlines.

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