Cobb County Approves a Contingency Plan for McCullom Field in Case of Government Shutdown
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The U.S. Senate passed a stopgap funding bill Friday. It now goes back to the House. But If the House rejects the Senate version, there could be a government shutdown next week. Locally, the Cobb County Commission approved an agreement this week to keep the federally-contracted control tower at McCollum Field operating if a shutdown occurs.
Under the agreement, the airport can use its own operating funds for up to 12 months in the event of a shutdown. Tim Lee chairs the commission.
“Obviously they’re not going to shutdown forever, but we just want to make sure we don’t have any interruption in our service.”
Karl Von Hagel is manager of the airport. He says the agreement is needed because the airport had been in danger of having its control tower closed by the FAA earlier this year as part of federal sequestration.
“We know in their tool box of cost cutting measures is the thought of reducing or closing federal contract towers, and in an abundance of caution we wanted to make sure we had this little insurance policy.”
The airport has not yet heard from the FAA about whether a shutdown would affect its air traffic control tower.
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