Federal money for airports without planes

As the federal government howls over the impending spending cuts that go into effect tomorrow, we learn about some of the appropriations that the sequester will not touch.  That right-wing rag The Washington Post tells about an airport in my native Oklahoma that gets $150,000 of federal money a year even though it has no planes.  There are actually 88 airports like that throughout the country.  (This one is over by where my brother lives.  I wonder if he has been there to see his federal tax dollars at work.)

From the Washington Post article by David A. Fahrenthold:

ARDMORE, Okla. — Along a country road in southern Oklahoma, there is a place that doesn’t make sense. It is an airport without passengers.

Or, for that matter, planes.

Oklahoma state officials receive hundreds of thousands of federal dollars just for maintaining this rarely used air strip. The Post’s David Fahrenthold went to stand on the runway and talk with the locals about one of the ways congress is giving away tax dollars.

Oklahoma state officials receive hundreds of thousands of federal dollars just for maintaining this rarely used air strip. The Post’s David Fahrenthold went to stand on the runway and talk with the locals about one of the ways congress is giving away tax dollars.

This is Lake Murray State Park Airport, one of the least busy of the nation’s 3,300-plus public airfields. In an entire week here, there might be one landing and one takeoff — often so pilots can use the bathroom. Or none at all. Visiting pilots are warned to watch out for deer on the runway.

So why is it still open? Mostly, because the U.S. government insists on sending it money.

Every year, Oklahoma is allotted $150,000 in federal funding because of this place, the result of a grant program established 13 years ago, in Congress’s golden age of pork. The same amount goes to hundreds of other tiny airfields across the country — including more than 80 like this one, with no paying customers and no planes based at the field.

Lake Murray, as it turns out, is an ATM shaped like an airport.

It’s also an example of the kind of spending — wide-ranging, constituent-pleasing giveaways — that Washington has struggled to swear off in this time of austerity. Once again, for example, Congress voted to continue giving money to local airports last year. And in Oklahoma, state officials voted to keep the airport open and, therefore, be able to take it.

“This is a direct gift from your congressman and senators,” said Victor Bird, director of the Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission, which handles the money the government allots for Lake Murray. “Everybody’s going to get something here, and we’re going to take some.”

For advocates of leaner government, the story of Lake Murray’s airport is particularly galling now, as an $85 billion budget cut nears on Friday. The “sequester,” as the cut is known, is what lawmakers call a “dumb cut,” because it doesn’t try to distinguish muscle from fat.

Within the Federal Aviation Administration, for instance, officials say the sequester could result in the closure of air-traffic control towers and long flight delays. But it would not touch the airport program, which has allotted Lake Murray about $1,500 for each of its takeoffs and landings.

“Why have we not gotten rid of the stupid stuff in the federal government?” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who highlighted Lake Murray in his annual “Wastebook” last year. “Because every one of these . . . stupid or irresponsible projects has a constituency.”

via In Oklahoma, tiny airport attracts federal money, but few planes – The Washington Post.

Read on for details of how this program works.  Because the Lake Murray airport can spend all of that money, it is spent elsewhere.  And despite efforts to kill it, this is another program that can’t die.