Air Traffic Conroller's Union Takes Fight With FAA to Capitol Hill

Turbulence Ahead. The air traffic controller's union is taking its fight with the Federal Aviation Administration over a new contract to Capitol Hill this week. With talks stalled after nine months, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is hoping to win support for a plan to strip the FAA of its trump card in negotiations.

Bills offered by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Sue Kelly (R-N.Y.) would force the agency into binding arbitration, since under current law the FAA can impose its final offer if Congress fails to intervene.

NATCA is deploying its heavy-hitting outside forces - including Cassidy & Associates, Fleishman-Hillard, Glover Park Group and Quinn Gillespie and Associates - to turbocharge a public relations and lobbying campaign.

After the FAA held a briefing last week for key Congressional aides, the union is readying its own briefings early this week for their staffers.

"This is no kind of bargaining that I'm used to, where one party has death-penalty rights," said NATCA President John Carr.

The group has already spent $2.6 million on a television advertising campaign. In addition to running on national cable news networks, the spots are airing in local markets of a handful of vulnerable Republican Senators, including Mike DeWine (Ohio), Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Jim Talent (Mo.).

Carr said "all options are on the table" for the union to commit even more money to the campaign.

The FAA, meanwhile, plans to continue its outreach campaign to educate lawmakers and staff on the issue, agency spokesman Geoff Basye said.

Prospects for enacting either of the bills could be bleak. While the House measure has 181 signatures, including respectable Republican support for a union-backed measure, GOP leaders in both chambers have signaled no willingness to buck a Bush administration agency on one of its key priorities. Thus, the air traffic controllers will push to get language designed to force the FAA back to the negotiating table added to the budget supplemental bill, said a source close to the process.

The air traffic controllers, of course, are no strangers to political controversy. Their 1981 strike made headlines when President Ronald Reagan fired the controllers and hired replacement workers. With those replacements now set to retire, the union says that reaching an agreement in time to keep some of them aboard is a critical safety need.

The FAA - which has won support for its position from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board - argues the union is making an unreasonable grab for more taxpayer dollars.

In the Money. Campaign finance woes for Members can mean big money for their lawyers and accountants - and for

the campaigns of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), the beneficiary is Republican insider Benjamin Ginsberg, a partner at the law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

The two have also turned to Robert Watkins & Co. for accounting counsel, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

A Patton Boggs spokesman confirmed that both are among Ginsberg's clients, but declined further comment.

In the first quarter of the year, Ginsberg picked up more than $50,000 from Martinez's campaign and is owed some $18,000 from Renzi's operation.

"These bills are related to a 2002 election matter which is expected to be resolved positively in the next few months," a Renzi aide said.

A spokesperson for the Martinez campaign could not be reached for comment.

Um, Scratch That ... It's become common knowledge that Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) - who along with his wife has been linked to the Jack Abramoff investigation - has a criminal attorney on retainer. He made a retainer payment to that lawyer, David Barger of Williams Mullen, on Jan. 27, according to recently disclosed campaign filings.

But back on Jan. 9, his spokeswoman Laura Blackann told Roll Call that her boss wasn't even interviewing potential lawyers, let alone hiring one.