Cash for Centennial Airport
The issue: Airport needs to retrieve the federal taxes it generates
Our view: Get the FAA off its dime

Editorial
Copyright 2001 Denver Publishing Company
Article date: December 13, 2001
 

During the last three years, Arapahoe County's Centennial Airport has collected $6.4 million in federal excise taxes for the Federal Aviation Administration.

And what has it gotten back from Washington during the same three years? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

That's because Centennial refuses to permit scheduled flights by 30-passenger (or larger) airliners, as the FAA requires if it is to send back any or all of an airport's tax money.

That's taxation without subsidization and a very good argument indeed for getting the FAA out of the airport finance game. But since there is no public sentiment, yet, for tossing Centennial's highly taxed aviation fuel into Boston Harbor, the airport is looking for alternative means of raising the money it needs for capital improvements. Centennial's best hope for getting federal funds was crushed when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday to let stand a lower court ruling upholding the FAA's denial.

Centennial handles a lot of charter and corporate jets as well as general aviation, but the airport - not to mention its neighbors - has no desire to offer scheduled service, which would just increase the noise and crowd the skies over Denver's southern suburbs.

The Arapahoe County commissioners voted, reluctantly, to allocate $1.5 million in general funds to the airport this year for emergency maintenance, primarily runway repairs. But of the five commissioners, only John Brackney is willing to make this a regular appropriation.

This leaves the commissioners and the airport authority board with several options, none of them wildly popular:

Impose a county-wide mill levy to compensate for the lost federal funds. Brackney estimates a modest 0.25 mills a year would do the job.

Create a special district within the county that would impose the tax. The number of mills, of course, would depend on the size of the district.

Both of the above would require a popular vote under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and even if the tax were minimal, it would not be an easy sell. Very few county residents actually use the airport and care little about its maintenance. Indeed the best argument would be a negative: Approve the tax or risk having more airplanes flying over your head.

Ask the nearby cities - Aurora, Greenwood Village, Lone Tree, Centennial, Parker - to do what the commissioners won't do, which is authorize an appropriation out of their general funds for the airport each year. This wouldn't require a vote but is an unreliable financing method. Even if all the cities agreed to participate the first year doesn't mean they'd go along in following years, since the membership of the councils is always in flux.

There is one other alternative, the one we think might be the best at this point.

Six years ago Congress - at the behest of the Colorado delegation - passed a law allowing airports like Centennial to reject scheduled service by airplanes carrying more than nine passengers and still keep their federal funds.

But the FAA, as usual, has been dragging its feet and hasn't finished drafting the regulations required to implement the law.

There are of course those in the county who don't want scheduled service even by tiny nine-passenger planes. But the fact is, nine-passenger scheduled service probably isn't economically feasible and isn't likely to be offered. It's worth the risk.

We would hope that U.S. Rep. Joel Hefley and his colleagues could bulldoze the FAA into finishing up the regulations post-haste and getting the federal tax money returned to Centennial. Ensuring tax justice is what our congressional delegation is for, after all.

This solution would eliminate the need to try the other, less palatable options.
 

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