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NATCA continues a “whirlwind” public education effort to draw attention to the controller retirement and staffing crisis looming just around the corner (or already here considering training times for new hires). Interviews, press releases and press conferences centering on the northwest area of the country last week were numerous as we march geographically across the country with this effort. Last week, print or TV coverage of the events or subject matter were carried in Las Vegas, Chicago, Tacoma, Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Salt lake city to name a few. Specialized news organizations such as AvFlash, Aviation Daily and Government Executive featured articles as well. NATCA intends to keep pounding away at this with media events, paid advertisements and legislative activity to shake the administration into action on this important issue. We have had tremendous success in educating and swaying members of Congress to our side on this, but as is often the case in DC, getting agreement that a problem exists and needs to be addressed doesn’t always translate into legislation and funding. That will be our ultimate challenge in these times of lean federal budgets.
The House Appropriations Aviation Sub-Committee marked up 7 million dollars for new controller hiring in the fiscal ’05 Transportation appropriations bill. This is a vast improvement over the zero dollar goose egg the Administration requested but is only enough to cover about 151 new hires. The full House Appropriations Committee meets this Friday and we will be working with Members and their staff to get this increased. The Senate Appropriations folks with responsibility on this issue will not be meeting until later this year. Keep in mind final votes and passage of bills this year will almost assuredly bleed over well into this next fiscal year.
Quote: We could certainly slow aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
Unknown
You may be asking yourself what the heck the previous sentence is doing in this update. Well it’s not often I take my lead from FAA management, but updates on the progress of the ATO for management have included some quotes from famous or influential people spaced throughout the brief updates. These are sometimes relevant to the content but usually just break things up a bit with humorous or thought provoking tidbits. Since I can, I intend to steal ..umm… I mean adopt this practice for my updates for at least 3 reasons. 1) perhaps a few of you might find it entertaining, 2) as I said before I can, and 3) I need to fill up space in this update anyway! I won’t go so far as to plagiarize their quotes but just borrow the practice.
Quote: I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
As a wrap up to this week I wanted to extend my thanks to the many of you, surprisingly many of you from the Central Region and elsewhere, who called or emailed me even as late as this week with comments about the brief Ronald Reagan retrospective I wrote for the update a few weeks back. Maybe it was because I mailed that update out separately from John’s due to my own publishing delay, but I have been absolutely flabbergasted and touched by the quantity of responses (about as many as I would get in six months under normal circumstances) expressing, for the most part, support and agreement with my characterization of how the world of politics and governance has drifted to polarization in the extreme. The intellectual back and forth with you has been rewarding and your words most kind, and I wanted to say thank you again. For those of you who like the kind of drivel that I wrote, you can expect more especially as the rhetoric and mean spirited vitriol of this election year approaches its peak. |
