By By JOHN EBY and JESSICA SIEFF / Niles Daily Star
State Rep. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, announced Wednesday that his amendment necessary to receive $163 million of federal funding for local aviation projects was blocked in the Legislature.
For general aviation airports such as Dowagiac Municipal Airport in Cass County, Jerry Tyler Memorial Airport in Niles and South Haven Regional Airport, the Legislature's failure to act means $150,000 received annually to undertake projects.
Also at risk are $4.7 million in upgrades to Southwest Michigan Regional Airport in Benton Harbor and $6.3 million for Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport.
"These airport projects are important infrastructure improvements that will boost our economy," Proos said. "The only thing stopping us from accepting federal funding and starting these crucial airport improvement projects is partisan bickering and game playing by those trying to add in nearly $2 billion of unrelated spending," Proos said. "I am fighting for these airport projects, but there is no way I am going to allow the state to rack up hundreds of millions of dollars of additional spending on Michigan's credit card.
"We need to act immediately or risk losing these federal aviation dollars to other states like Indiana or Ohio. I am calling on my colleagues in a bipartisan manner to accept already designated funding so we can get our airport projects underway."
State lawmakers are wrangling about the funding mechanism for taxes collected on passenger ticket sales. Niles and Dowagiac airports do not offer passenger services.
Neil Coulston, airport manager at Jerry Tyler Memorial Airport in Niles said that they receive $150,000 of federal money annually. He said he has heard of the money getting held up in legislation before – but as for right now "we haven't felt any effects of the money being frozen or locked."
Coulston also said that projects for the airport are currently underway for monies allocated for the year of 2008. "Our projects have the green light, the ones we're working with now."
While others worry that the funding will cease completely -Coulston is just waiting to see what happens. "I haven't been told anything is on hold," he said. "We're forging ahead."
Rozanne Scherr, Assistant city manager in Dowagiac said the Dowagiac Municipal Airport has tapped this pool of money in the past to fund taxiway improvements, main runway improvements, last year's access road and paving project and this year's snow removal equipment building, which "as I understand it, is not in jeopardy as we have a grant for that in place."
"Proos is right, and I am very pleased that he is fighting to protect our interests," she said.
Dowagiac Airport Manager Gary Carlile agreed Thursday that Dowagiac has no projects at risk at this point – but future projects could be impeded.
"Short term, it won't affect us," Carlile said. "Long term, it could. The good news for Dowagiac is we handled a lot of our needs when the getting was good."
Carlile explained that under a funding formula implemented a number of years ago, the $150,000 airport allocation comes through a split of all revenue sources, including passenger and jet fuel taxes.
Larger airports object because a small general aviation airport receives a more generous share than its use base might warrant.
The $150,000 allocations accumulate for five years at a time.