TRENTON — While President Barack Obama and legislators continue talks
to fund the federal budget, Mercer County is feeling the effects of
across-the-board furloughs and funding cuts caused by the government
shutdown.
Those effects could become catastrophic if the shutdown
continues much longer, especially at the Trenton-Mercer Airport, where
pilots and passengers again face the prospect of flying without an
active control tower.
Seven employees man the airport’s air
traffic control tower, paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration’s
Federal Contract Tower program that staffs 255 towers across the
country.
Ron Taylor, president of the Professional Air Traffic
Controllers Organization Local 81, which represents the Trenton-Mercer
air traffic controllers, said the entire Federal Contract Tower program
will come to a halt on Nov. 1 if there isn’t a resolution. Their present
contract runs out Oct. 31.
Unlike some federal employees who
have continued to work without being paid, promised reimbursement upon a
Congressional resolution, the controllers won’t work without a
contract, Taylor said.
“This has reached out to the real world
now. The people in mainstream America, the federal employees, they have
their own rules,” Taylor said. “But these guys aren’t public employees.
They’re contractors and, if they don’t get paid by the FAA, they don’t
go to work.”
The tower was also in danger of closing earlier this
year, when the FAA announced it would stop funding more than 150 towers
at small airports, including Trenton-Mercer, as a result of federal
spending cuts. The decision was reversed less than one month later.
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