FAA Stimulus Funds Some Lower Priority Projects

Liz Jones
10/19/2009

The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded more than $44 million in stimulus grants to Washington airports. But nearly 30 percent of the money has gone to projects with low priority ratings.

TRANSCRIPT

The FAA grades projects on a priority scale of 1 to 100. For stimulus projects, the agency set the minimum score at 62. But some lower scoring projects in Washington got money anyway. That's according to data recently released from the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trust. A project in rural Wilbur, Washington scored the lowest of all the statewide projects, with a rating of 42. The other projects scored 60, just below the threshold. One grant went to Spokane International Airport, to resurface a 50–year–old tarmac, or apron. Craig Woodard is the airport's spokesman.

Woodard: "Clearly runways, taxiways and aprons are the highest priorities in terms of safety with the FAA. And so these projects scored very, very highly."

But, technically, they did not score high enough to meet the FAA's criteria for stimulus dollars.

The FAA's Laura Brown explains they actually raised the priority bar for stimulus projects, compared to normal funding criteria. And the National Priority Rating, or NPR score, is just one factor for stimulus projects.

Brown: "They also had to meet a number of other criteria that enabled them to be ready to go. And then we focused on some other areas that weren't built into the NPR rating system that included runway safety, the upgrade of aging infrastructure at some airports and other criteria."

Brown says the projects probably would've been funded anyway, if not through the recovery act. But she admits, nationwide, some higher priority projects got passed over for stimulus money because they weren't ready to go. The other low–rated stimulus projects in the state are at airports in Bellingham and the Tri–Cities.

Meanwhile, one of the lowest rated stimulus projects in the country is at Idaho's Pocatello Regional Airport. A terminal expansion project there came in with a score of just 31.

Liz Jones, KUOW News.

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