Tennessee’s Airports Seek $125M In New Annual Funding
Photo Credit: Nashville International Airport / Facebook
The Center Square [By Jon Styf] –
The Tennessee Association of Air Carrier Airports asked for an annual funding increase of $125 million Wednesday during a presentation to the Senate Transportation and Safety Committee.
The group represents the state’s 78 airports and is led by Nashville International Airport President and CEO Doug Kreulen. Until now, the airport’s state funding has come through an aviation fuel tax to carriers.
That tax feeds into a Transportation Equity Fund, which reached a high of $56.6 million in 2008 but was down to $18.2 million in 2021.
The Legislature cut the tax rate from 4.5% to 4.25% last year and capped the tax for any one entity from $10.5 million to $8.5 million. That cap affected only FedEx, which had paid $32 million in fuel taxes before the $10.5 million cap was created in 2015.
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State Rep. William Lamberth, R-Portland, hinted last year airports would get an annual appropriation in the future instead of relying on the tax.
“We put roughly $50 million into the fund this year in order to get it up to the level where it needs to be,” Lamberth said at the time. “I want to say, for the record, that is what I hope we will do from here forward. We need to set aside a specific amount of money that takes care of our airports because they’re a critical part of our infrastructure separate from whatever happens from any amount of tax that’s coming in from any one individual or any one particular corporation or anything else.”
Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, said Wednesday that FedEx required those funds to make their own infrastructure upgrades.
Kreulen said Tennessee’s airports support 138,000 jobs, $8 billion in payroll and activities at airports lead to $739 million in state taxes generated each year.
“We want to invest in future infrastructure, and we want to make sure that we can maintain the existing infrastructure at all of our 78 airports,” Kreulen said.
The Federal Aviation Administration has funded all airports in the U.S. with a budget of $3.35 billion since 2009, Kreulen said, but states such as Georgia and Alabama are discussing large funding increases. Georgia is discussing an increase to between $80 million and $100 million annually, Kreulen said.
While Tennessee ranked No. 2 amongst neighboring states in funding with $56.6 billion annually in 2008, it now ranks below Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia in that category.
About the Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Staff Reporter – Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonStyf.
