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Federal Aviation Administration

Congress wants detailed construction plans from FAA

Bart Jansen
USA TODAY
The air traffic control tower at Chicago's Midway International Airport on March 12, 2013.

WASHINGTON – Congress is threatening to penalize the Federal Aviation Administration $100,000 per day unless the agency provides more details about its construction plans.

FAA would have to submit a five-year capital-investment plan at the same time that President Obama submits his overall budget, which is typically in February, under a provision in the government spending bill the Senate is expected to complete as early as today.

Under the bill, the FAA's construction plan for 2016 through 2020 must have the funding for each budget line item. And the plan must have the total funding for each year estimated by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

If FAA misses the deadline, the agency will lose $100,000 of its funding for each day the report is late, according to page 1418 of the bill.

The FAA didn't respond to a request for comment.

FAA already has construction plans. For example, the National Airspace Capital Investment Plan for 2013 to 2017 runs 378 pages, with priorities such as safety and innovation.

But while charts list subject areas such as $26 million this year for runway lights and $9 million for global-positioning requirements, the report speaks mostly in broad terms and doesn't list specific costs of specific projects.

FAA has a broad range of facilities. The agency spent $1 billion on repairs and improvements to its 1,230 facilities from 2008 through 2013, according to the Government Accountability Office.

But as each facility established its own priorities, GAO said in September 2013 that the FAA didn't have an agency-wide priorities to target limited funding for the projects with the greatest need of repair and the most importance to the air-traffic control system.

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