When I was covering politics, I used to always enjoy lawmakers who would pat themselves on the back for “listening” to their constituents by scheduling dozens of in-district town halls.
No matter what political party or where they’re located, your member of Congress and senators hold local listening sessions in your community. Often times the local representatives to the state legislature will also tag along to these events as well, so they too can gloat about being in touch with the common man.
But one thing they never tell you about these meetings is that almost no one — and I mean no one — attends these things.
With FAA reauthorization behind us, it’s time for Washington to finally hunker down and look to a major infrastructure bill to address the massive needs of our nation’s transportation system.
Reauthorization was a good thing for the industry, but it fell well short of what’s needed to address our needs now. Once again, leadership showed it was unwilling to address funding for airport infrastructure.
But 2019 will bring new leadership to Congress and despite the political vitriol enveloping The Hill and the administration the past few years, infrastructure is one of the few spots where the parties agree. While getting anything passed in a divided government one year our from a presidential election cycle may be a moon shot, an infrastructure bill might be one of the only major initiatives we could see movement on.
An infrastructure bill could address the PFC issue. It could also open up alternative funding methods like P3 projects by addressing concerns of airport or municipal leaders who balk at the concept on fears of self-emulation by obtuse funding and management plans.
So looking ahead at 2019, I ask all of you to resolve to finding time to attend these sparsely attended town halls and tell your lawmakers directly why airport infrastructure spending needs to be addressed now. Not just you, but your staff who can share what impact their job incurs by a lack of movement on this front.
And encourage your subcontractors too. Locally owned DBEs and contractors are living proof of the impact adequate funding can have on the business community in these congressional districts. With enough people, you could literally spend an entire week educating your lawmaker about the importance infrastructure spending has on their community, not just the nation.
Remember that your time is limited, but the importance of the mission is not.
From all of us at Airport Business, thanks for reading and have a happy and safe 2019!
