Alaska Senator Supports User Fees For All EXCEPT Alaska Pilots

How do these arrogant, self-serving, simpleminded politicians manage
to get elected? Doesn't Senator Stevens realize that his token
exemption will be overturned as soon as the bill is enacted? Doesn't
he realize that he has become the first evidence of the user fee
proponents' divide and conquer strategy?


STEVENS TRIES TO EXEMPT ALASKA PILOTS FROM USER FEES

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, vice chairman of the Senate Commerce,
Science and Transportation Committee, voted against the
Nelson/Sununu amendment that would have stripped the $25 user fee
out of S.1300, the Senate's FAA reauthorization bill, but he
secured an exemption for many Alaskan aviators. The hotly debated
anti-user-fee amendment, supported by general aviation lobbying
groups, was defeated by the committee by Stevens' tie-breaking
vote. "I am concerned that this legislation as originally drafted
places an undue burden on too many small carriers in rural parts
of America, including Alaska," he said in a news release

(http://stevens.senate.gov/public/ind...id=&Issue_id=).
Stevens said he voted in favor of the bill even though it
contained an aviation user fee, according to KTUU.com
(http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp...nav=menu510_2),
because killing it would have forced discussion of FAA funding to
start all over again. "I don't like the user-fee concept, but the
way it's been worked out now, it is a fair thing," Stevens said.
Dee Hanson, executive director of the Alaska Airmen's Association,
told AVweb on Tuesday that while she appreciates Sen. Stevens'
work to exempt rural Alaskan aviators, she fears the expansion of
user fees both in Alaska and in the rest of the country. "Our
members also fly in the Lower 48," she said. "An exemption is a
temporary fix. We oppose changing how the FAA is funded over to a
user-fee basis, and the known fact is that user fees for IFR
services have the potential to erode safety. We will continue to
fight this."
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#195309