FAA Supplemental Grant Program Update
On March 23, 2018, President Trump signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 that funded the federal government for the remainder of FY 2018. The bill provides an additional $1B for FAA’s Airport Improvement Grant Program to remain available through September 30, 2020. No local match is required for these grants.
The FAA will distribute funds as discretionary grants to airports and must give priority consideration to projects at rural General Aviation Airports and Small or Non-Hub Commercial Service Airports. For Texas, 56 of our general aviation airports and 18 commercial service airports are eligible for the supplemental funding program.
For round one of the program, FAA accepted requests for FY 2018 funding from priority airports with projects that would be under construction within six months. TxDOT Aviation submitted 11 grant requests totaling $16.5M, projects that met the FY 2018 criteria. FAA awarded a total of $205M in grants in round one. The only Texas project that was selected in round one was an $8M grant for improvements to the Brownsville/South Padre Island International Airport terminal building. The second and final round for selection of projects is now underway. TxDOT Aviation submitted requests for 155 projects; $189.9M in funding, $43.8M for priority airports and $145.1M for non-priority airports. Our planning staff did a great job in assisting in the development of these requests in a very short period of time. The total request from the State of Texas was $357M which includes requests submitted by air carrier airports that deal directly with the FAA.
All we can do now is wait and see what projects FAA selects. Hopefully, we will do much better in Round Two than we did in Round One.
FAA Reauthorization
On October 5, 2018, President Trump signed into law a new five-year FAA reauthorization bill – the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (H.R.302). The bill did not include an increase in the annual authorization, $3.35B, for the national Airport Improvement Grant Program. However, it did include a new supplemental funding authorization of approximately $1 billion per year targeted towards small and rural airports. This additional funding has the potential to bring much needed improvements to our nation’s small airports. In addition to the sorely needed increase in funding, the new legislation will also provide predictability and stability in programing our State Block Grant funding over the next five years.