Skinner Urges Local Control of Airport Fees

WASHINGTON —  Local airport authorities should be allowed to decide whether to charge passengers a fee to help pay for dealing with current and future airport congestion, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner told a House subcommittee Tuesday.

The fee, which Skinner proposed earlier this year, would be $3 for each one-way trip.

“This is not a tax but must be a voluntary charge, with each locality in a position to decide whether or not to levy a personal service charge and what projects to pursue,” Skinner told the subcommittee on aviation of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation. “The power to use personal facility charges must reside with those at the affected facility, because they will be accountable to their customers for imposing the charge. Congress will not.”

Collecting the fees, he said, will begin a process that government officials and airport officials will have “much more control over” than the federal Aviation Trust Fund. That fund contains $7 billion, but Skinner said the amount available for airports is “woefully inadequate.”

“This is a pro-consumer proposal,” Skinner said. “The dollars that result will go directly to reducing delays at the facility where charged, and to opening competitive opportunities that will hold fares down.”

Some members of the panel argued that Congress established the trust fund for such problems. Opponents of the fee say the Administration is hoarding trust fund money to reduce the apparent size of the federal deficit and should spend that money first.

“Passengers are once again on the verge of being taken for a ride by the White House, and Congress should not license this latest slap at consumers,” Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose) said.

He added: “It’s no secret that capital improvements are grossly underfunded, but consumers should not be asked again to pay for improvements when the monies they’ve already paid idle away in the Office of Management and Budget’s version of a Swiss bank account.”