The House Appropriations Committee last week called the Federal Aviation Administration's personnel reform "experiment" a failure and slashed nearly $60 million from the Bush Administration's fiscal 2002 budget request for hiring new employees in all lines of business at the agency. The committee Wednesday approved the fiscal 2002 transportation appropriations bill, which provides some $13.3 billion for FAA (BA, June 18/286).

In report language accompanying the bill, the Appropriations Committee cited "severe levels" of employee dissatisfaction and said it "concludes that FAA's personnel reform has been a failure." In 1996 Congress authorized FAA to develop its own personnel and compensation system "to give the agency more flexibility because of its daily interaction with the fast-paced and rapidly-growing aviation industry," the committee said.

In recent employee attitude surveys, however, less than 10 percent of the employees believed personnel reform successfully eliminated bureaucracy or helped accomplish FAA's mission, the committee said. The reform has not been used to place employees where they are most needed, it added. Existing pay disparities "support the view that pay is based more upon negotiation than need or individual contribution," it added. A National Academy of Public Administration study found that FAA has not met key goals of personnel reform, the committee noted, and said, "Congress should carefully review the effects of personnel reform leading up to reauthorizing of AIR-21 in fiscal year 2004 to gauge whether the experiment should be continued."

The committee called for nearly $7 million less in human resource program funding than the Administration requested, saying that "even though personnel reform was expected to streamline human resource management administrative costs, the opposite seems to have occurred." The growth in human resource activity has done little to boost employee morale, protect training resources, or ensure parity in compensation. "With this track record, the committee believes a slower growth in budgetary resources is justified in order to foster accountability and stronger performance."

The appropriations bill also would provide $57.9 million less for new agency hiring than FDA had sought, a move that reflects a slowdown in hiring at the agency this year, the committee said. FAA's employment as of March was 930 positions below the level the agency had projected in its fiscal 2001 budget request. The fiscal 2002 budget request seeks an additional 1,457 positions over the current level, but "the committee does not believe this level of hiring is credible over the next several months."

9,500 Controllers Make More Than 100K

The committee was critical of the agency's handling of controller pay. The average controller will earn $135,000 next year, the panel said, equal to 93 percent of what FAA Administrator Jane Garvey is paid. More than 9,500 controllers next year will earn more than $100,000. Meanwhile, FAA decided to limit pay increases for air traffic managerial, supervisory and specialist employees, creating "huge and disconcerting pay inequities within the air traffic line of business, as well as recruitment difficulties.'" The committee directed FAA to report by the end of the year on how to resolve the disparities in pay and "strongly encouraged" the agency to take measures to boost productivity and lower cost.

The committee also gave little credence to FAA and controller union claims that air traffic controllers are on the verge of a major turnover with a number of retirements. "Although there has been speculation this year about an impending wave of retirements, the committee sees little evidence to suggest such an event." Controller retirements dropped in the past two years, and controllers work on average more than six years beyond their retirement eligibility date, it said.

Overall, the committee provided $5.5 billion for air traffic services in fiscal 2002, the largest piece of the $6.9 billion set aside for the agency's operations. The bill calls for the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to cover nearly $5.8 billion of the operations budget, with the general fund of the U.S. Treasury accounting for the rest. The committee's proposed budget calls for a $32.9 million, or less than five percent, increase over fiscal 2001 levels in regulation and certification funding, but falls $21 million short of the Administration request.

The bill includes $750,000 to continue the Centennial of Flight Commission, $8.5 million for the redesign of the New Jersey/New York airspace and $1.3 million for FAA to continue its investigation of technology that would bring more accurate airport and flight status information directly to the passenger. The committee praised FAA's contract tower cost-sharing effort as a "valuable program which provides safety benefits to small communities" and included $6 million to cover the costs.

Other provisions in the bill would provide $6 million to FAA to begin forming air tour management plans at national parks. Congress called for the establishment of such management plans in comprehensive aviation reauthorization legislation, AIR-21, and FAA this spring released the proposed regulation to govern their creation. The bill further prohibits FAA from using funds to operate manned auxiliary flight service stations in the contiguous U.S. This measure came at the request of FAA, which did not seek any funding for manned AFSS.

In other FAA accounts, the committee called for $2.9 billion for facilities and equipment, matching FAA's request, $3.3 billion for the Airport Improvement Program and $191 million for research, engineering and development. The committee provided $75.9 million for FAA's continued development of the wide area augmentation system (WAAS). This matched FAA's request and comes despite last year's series of technical glitches, cost overruns and delays. The committee also set aside $42.4 million for the local area augmentation system (L3%AS). The committee, however, called FAA's request for improving aviation weather services "excessive" and reduced the funding by $1.7 million.

The committee further set aside $1 million for FAA to transfer notice to airmen (NOTAM) services to its special use airspace management system (SAMS). The committee cited the recent Gulfstream III crash in Aspen, Colo., in which tower controllers had not received a NOTAM prohibiting a certain type of instrument approach at the airport at night. "Presently, NOTAMs are disseminated by 1950s-era teletype machines," the committee said. "To ensure that NOTAMS are properly disseminated in the short term, the FAA should take the central NOTAM processing function and rehost it on the SAMS platform." The committee also encouraged FAA to transition to a digital platform "before the system exceeds its capacity and becomes unsupportable."

By Kerry Lynch ([email protected])

Copyright 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.