"Congressional Leaders Quiz FAA On Source Of NextGen Funding"

February 8, 2008

by Madhu Unnikrishnan - Avaition Week

Congressional leaders earlier this week grilled FAA executives about the sources of the $688 million slated for NextGen in the President’s FY2009 FAA budget request, questioning where the funding is coming from when the overall request is significantly lower than the enacted FY2008 budget.

On Monday, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and FAA Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell announced that the budget request includes $688 million for NextGen programs -- a $400 million rise from the $212 million in the enacted FY2008 budget (DAILY, Feb. 5).

But yesterday, Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), House aviation subcommittee chairman, wanted to know where FAA executives would look for the monies, given that capital research funding goes up only by $200 million in the budget request and the overall request is about $300 million less than the enacted FY2008 budget.

The additional NextGen funding will come from FAA programs that are being phased out, said Ramesh Punwani, the agency’s CFO. Included are research into such programs as ground-based radar systems and other programs FAA will eventually replace with NextGen, said Gene Juba, FAA senior VP-finance.

Punwani and Juba told the subcommittee they did not have details on the programs earmarked for replacement, but would provide details later.
Costello and Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) also questioned how FAA would spend the $688 million allotted for NextGen and raised concerns about the potential for NextGen costs to balloon.

FAA is “staying on top of the costs of NextGen,” Juba said, adding that the agency has given the Government Accountability Office a detailed plan for program management.