By Keith Laing, The Hill
05/24/13 01:49 PM ET
May 24, 2013, 3:54 pm
A Colorado lawmaker is calling for an audit of his regional Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) office.
The lawmaker, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), said the FAA has been slow to respond to requests for information that he requested on behalf of his constituents.
"It has come to my attention that the Denver Airports District Office, as part of the Northwest Mountain Region, has been negligent in processing permit applications for both commercial and agricultural usage," Gardner wrote in a letter to the Department of Transportation's (DOT) Inspector General Calvin Scovell.
"My office has received inadequate replies and even attempted to set-up a member level call with FAA administrators over three ago and received no response back," Gardner continued. "I write today to request an audit of the Denver Airports District Office by the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation. Throughout my tenure in Congress, these issues and problems with the Denver office have never been rectified and I hope a complete audit will help me and my constituents understand why these problems continue to occur."
Gardner said the FAA's permits to fly in Colorado's air space are important to his state's rural areas.
"My district in particular is over 31,000 square miles, and due to the lack of a large scale airport, small planes provide a vital service in personal transportation and are used for business purposes such as the spraying of fields by agricultural aircraft," he said.
Gardner said in a statement Friday that he was requesting the audit because "this type of laziness and disregard from a government agency is unacceptable.
“My office has been trying to reach officials at FAA’s regional office and representatives in Washington D.C. to address a pressing economic matter that affects the state of Colorado," Gardner said. "Every day they ignore us businesses are losing money and the state is losing revenue.”
The FAA said Friday afternoon that it was working "in good faith" to answer Gardner's requests.
"The Federal Aviation Administration is aware of the applications and has been working in good faith with Congressman Gardner’s office over the past several months to address questions about the operator certification process," the agency said in a statement. "The FAA will continue to work closely with the congressman and his constituents to address any ongoing questions as they move through the certification process."
-This article was updated with a response from the FAA at 5:29 p.m.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/aviation/301875-lawmaker-calls-for-faa-office-audit#ixzz2UIP9GLpy
By Allison Sherry, The Denver Post
WASHINGTON — Rep. Cory Gardner requested an audit Friday
of the regional office of the Federal Aviation Administration after he
says the agency’s local office has not responded to repeated attempts to
reach them.
“This type of laziness and disregard from a government agency is
unacceptable,” said Gardner, R-Yuma. “My office has been trying to reach
officials at FAA’s regional office and representatives in Washington,
D.C. to address a pressing economic matter that affects the state of
Colorado.
That matter is processing permit applications for people who want to
fly for agricultural purposes. (This usually means farmers who are
seeking permits to crop dust or view their land.)
According to Gardner’s office, a business in his district applied for
a permit to fly a crop duster in April 2011 and the application was
lost by the Denver FAA field office. The company, Nickel D LLC, never
moved up in line to compensate for the lost application and now two
years later they still haven’t received a permit.
Read more: http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2013/05/24/
http://gardner.house.gov/sites/gardner.house.gov/files/Gardner%20Letter%20to%20IG%20of%20DOT.pdf
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