On Assignment with Bill Garvey
"A Right to Petition"
I recently returned from back-to-back trips to Washington, D.C. The first was to report on the National Aircraft Resale Association's (NARA) annual "Day on the Hill," but my assignment changed course unexpectedly. And then I returned to the Federal City four days later for GAMA's annual state of the industry presentation, which has acquired a kind of ritual status within the business and general aviation community.
The NARA folk gathered at the Hotel Monaco, a place unknown to me during my ten years in Washington. Unknown, because it was nonexistent. Back then the edifice was empty, an abandoned post office gone derelict. Today it is a glistening presence with smiling, uniformed doormen, broad stone steps, extra wide halls and ceilings that rise to the stratosphere.
When I was resident in Washington, I don't recall ever having even seen the place, which is located at 7th and F Streets. And its location probably has something to do with that. You see, on one of my first visits to D.C. there were armed soldiers clustered at every other intersection and the streets just beyond were ablaze, as store after store was torched. The dividing line between relative calm and frightening chaos was 14th Street. Obviously, things settled down eventually, but an uncomfortable demarcation remained for years. The place could be damned dangerous.
Well, that's over. Mind you, you can still get hurt in D.C. – it's a city, after all. But the geographical divisions in center city that I knew are gone. Where once there was blight, detritus and danger, along with the scary denizens typical of such places, there now stand palaces of commerce and government, populated by busy, smartly dressed people who sip lattes, punch Blackberries and drive cars that talk. If you had known the place as I did twenty years ago, you would be as dazzled as I. The transformation is nothing short of amazing.
Streets where I would not have set foot, are now crowded with sparkling office buildings nine and ten stories tall that charge $75 and more to occupy one square foot of them per year. Twelve inches by twelve inches. And they've got people on waiting lists. The draw of the capital is such that despite the continuing creation of places like the Monaco, there are nights when all of the city's hotel rooms, many of them going for well north of $300 daily, are simply sold out. Go find a manger.
Commensurate with the goings-on downtown, the 'burbs are growing like kudzu. I remember when I-270, a feeder heading northwest through Montgomery County, Maryland, was a four lane strip. Today, when you include breakdown lanes, it's something like 14. Where once there were farms to the horizon, there are now mini-manze ad infinitum.
When I moved to the area back in the early 1970s, Dulles International was an incongruously stylish and isolated outpost, a federal boondoggle said to have been built on property once owned by Sen. Harry Lee in horsey Loudoun County. There the "traffic" controllers had none and, bored to tears, invited me in my 172 to shoot an ILS to one runway, then a VOR to another, and would you like to try a backcourse, perhaps? Now the airport is choking on traffic and in the throes of never-ending expansion, its isolation a faint, quaint memory. Like an Oldsmobile Super 88 with a Rocket V-8.
All of this giddy – nay, dazzling – prosperity bubbles along irrespective of the fact that Washington is a place that produces no product or service of any commercial value. Want to buy a Form 1064? What bid do I hear for an FAR 91.164 subsection [B4]? On your way from the cleaners, pick up a dozen Supreme Court rulings, please; we've got guests coming for dinner tonight.
Obviously Washington's attraction, its capital, if you will, is the fact that it is the capital of one of the most dynamic and wealthiest countries to ever exist. The government that resides here is a consumer of unprecedented voracity – for fiscal 2008, President Bush has proposed spending nearly $3 trillion (actually $2,800 billion) on stuff. F-18 Hornets, hamburgers, housing, hemoglobin, honey bees, you name it.
That, and the fact that we've either given or allowed the government to assert tremendous power over how we conduct our lives and our business affairs means that we must now monitor, prod and block the government's functionaries all the time to minimize or redirect these intrusions.
For those two reasons, mainly, a tremendously powerful vortex has formed over metropolitan Washington that sucks in people and institutions from sea to shining sea, and from well beyond. That's why it is now home to everything from Gannett newspapers and United Mine Workers, to Satellite Radio, the Air Line Pilots Association and that gilded gang transplanted from the Golden State, the LockheedMartin Co.
And me, too. I'd been pulled to D.C. to see how the NARA members made their case against user fees and higher taxes before their elected representatives on Capitol Hill. However, when I opened the day's schedule, I found I'd been assigned to visit with the staff of my House member, Chris Shays, and senior senator, Chris Dodd. Since I'd come to report, not petition, I was taken aback momentarily, but then reconsidered. After all, I am a citizen, an airplane owner and now I was intensely curious about the process.
Before anyone could say, "We the people…" I was marching out the Monaco and up the long, cold sunlit hill beyond. I had something to say, and I would be heard.
The experience that followed was invigorating and reassuring. Staffers in both offices were welcoming, interested and somewhat knowledgeable about aviation matters. I was impressed that they were impressed that I was from Connecticut. I'd always heard that constituents were valued, but their reaction to my address confirmed it absolutely. They took notes, asked questions and allowed no interruptions. I had a vote, and their attention. It was a revealing experience. I truly felt empowered.
Beyond that, walking around the legislative offices was cool. The Russell Building's historied halls were heaped with desks, chairs, tables and cabinets – clear evidence of lots of new folks moving in, replacing the former occupants whom voters had asked to move out. The names on the doors were the stuff of the daily news: McCain, Kerry, Kennedy, Warner, Biden, Lott. And there, quick stepping by amid a phalanx of stern looking young men each with a radio plug in one ear – Hillary. I knew my bride would be thrilled by the spotting.
Once reassembled at the Monaco, we petitioner-citizens compared notes and discovered that our findings were quite similar. Everyone agreed that the experience had been well worth the time and money invested and that our elected representatives seemed eager to hear our concerns, review the facts and to respond. The only disappointment of the day was the poor showing by full members of NARA, the aircraft brokers and dealers, as opposed to the associates comprising bankers, insurers and such. There was consensus that we should do another Day on the Hill, and soon.
It needs to be. The GAMA numbers, revealed days later at a fancy, crowded luncheon at the Willard Hotel, spoke of a banner year in general aviation airplane manufacturing – 4,042 airplanes, of which 885 were business jets, worth a record $18.8 billion. And, GAMA Chairman John Grisik continued, the outlook for 2007 and beyond was "wonderful." That was the word: wonderful.
One might have expected the diners to be up on the tabletops, party horns at their lips. Let le bon temps rouler, mes amis! But instead they remained seated and sober, because by then everyone in the room knew that the government planned to nix the wonder and put an end to the party. Although the details had yet to be revealed, GAMA President Pete Bunce said the intent was clear: Left unopposed, the feds were going to crush business and recreational airplane operators with billions of dollars in new fees and taxes. Although he didn't ask for a show of hands, it wasn't necessary. Among this crowd, the vote was clear: Oppose.
It should be quite a fight, with the air carriers and executive branch squaring off against general aviation and some congressional allies. It's a contest in which the airlines have nothing to lose, and general aviation everything. If the airlines fail, the status quo remains and since they're profitable and growing, that's perfectly okay. However, if they win, they can hold ticket prices at current levels while the money formerly collected as a passenger tax falls to their bottom lines causing their profits to soar by billions. Even better, they wound -- perhaps mortally -- business aviation, the despised, handsome stranger who swept their first their first class passengers away. Oh, are they ready to rumble. Going against someone who has nothing to lose is never a good option.
At risk are vast sums of money, balance of trade, tens of thousands of jobs, global leadership, national manufacturing resources, infrastructure support, incalculable hours saved or lost, pride and votes. In other words, it's a Washington story. I'll be back.
