Fwd: Reply To Randy Babbitt, FAA Administrator-Designee
Thomas Sullivan
John J. Tormey III, PLLC
217 East 86th Street, PMB 221
New York, NY 10028 USA
(212) 410-4142 (phone)
(212) 410-2380 (fax)
Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
P.O. Box 918
Pearl River, NY 10965 USA
(845) 735-9691 (phone
(845) 735-0476 (fax)
VIA E-MAIL:
and U.S. MAIL
Friday, April 10, 2009
J. Randolph (Randy) Babbitt
c/o Oliver Wyman
10780 Parkridge Boulevard, Suite 75
Reston, VA 20191 USA
Re: Your E-Mail To Me Of Friday, April 3, 2009
Termination Of The FAA’s NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign (“Redesign”)
Dear Randy:
I know, I know. To track your “hold the fire” analogy, usually Quiet Rockland and I are quicker on the proverbial draw in response. But the time which I have taken to herein reply to your kind and thoughtful April 3, 2009 e-mail to me (copied below), is the product of at least four important things: (A) very careful deliberation; (B) my painstaking review of your e-mail with community leaders and government officials representing Rockland, from the Hamlet of Pearl River to federal U.S. Senate offices; (C) the Holiday schedules of others; and (D) the now-stark, welcome distinction between Sturgellian simplicity on the one hand, and the Randy Babbitt incisive, augmented standard-of-care on the other hand. The historic significance of your April 3 reply e-mail is not at all lost on me or my neighbors here in the Northeast. President Obama promised transparency in government. You just delivered it to us, for him. God Bless You for doing that. In the interests of reciprocal professional courtesy, I am extending you what I will call “transparency in citizenry” to let you know exactly what Quiet Rockland and I are thinking, in reply. The short answer to “Hold your fire” is, “Yes and No”. I’ll explain.
Thank you again for many things - your courtesy to me and Rockland every single time, the immediacy of your replies, your constructive and positive approach, your acknowledgment of Rocklanders’ concerns as valid, and your willingness to continue to listen to them. Said one of my good friends in County government (who happens to be on the opposite side of the aisle from the Administration at that) about your April 3 e-mail: “That is beautiful. We are finally on the high road. He sounds like just the man with the intelligence and compassion we need to run FAA, and to realize how much harm the Redesign would do to Rockland County. Please keep him as a friend”. I intend to do that. That said, as you know, the firm of Holland & Knight represents Rockland County in the D.C. Circuit litigation - not me. Although I have collected input from local to federal officials in connection with this reply to you, my thoughts are my own.
The graphic designers, cartoonists, satirists, and music producers supporting Quiet Rockland’s grassroots efforts and blogs have already been told to “hold their (proverbial) fire” when it comes to Randy Babbitt. That’s a given. That’s simply respect for you, USDOT Secretary LaHood, and President Obama. John F. Kennedy was my father’s army Commander-in-Chief. RFK and MLK inspired me and my parents. John F. Kennedy Jr. was a junior high school schoolmate of mine in New York. In recent years, I was without leaders serving as inspiration, and that was truly the coldest of winters. Now I look to Barack Obama and his Administration to fulfill my American dream. I trust that you feel the same. Speaking for Quiet Rockland, we know and believe you are good people.
But the practical problem that your “hold your fire” suggestion poses to me, the one upon which I have ruminated for the past week, is as follows. The FAA, the agency that you are about to inherit, is not at all holding THEIR fire on the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. Rather, Osmus, Krakowski, Steve Kelley and Marie Kennington-Gardner are going full-boar. They are actually accelerating the previously-FAA-communicated schedule for Redesign for fear of being “second-guessed” once you are in office. They are trying to rush as many changes as possible before the D.C. Circuit’s decision. They are thereby putting even more Americans in harm’s way, and that’s totally unacceptable. Steve Kelley and his cronies just ballet-stepped through a February 20, 2009 Congressional update on Redesign, and just published yet another new harmful Redesign newsletter to the faa.gov website a few days ago. They’re not stopping. Meanwhile, the ATC’s never should have been excluded from the Redesign. FAA should have never cut environmental criteria out of the purpose-and-need and then issued an EIS with neither bona fide noise-mitigation nor emissions-analysis. A failed ATC named Steve Kelley whose actions and inactions once helped snuff out the lives of 6 innocent people in a mid-air collision between 2 planes over Fairview NJ, should never have been deputized by Blakey and Sturgell to route Redesign pathways over densely-populated minority communities in Rockland County. These FAA people are in a rush not only to hurt us, but possibly also kill us - at least some of us. Therefore, Randy, how do I “hold my fire”, when my life and the lives of my loved ones and friends continue to be threatened by a headless rogue federal agency still spinning out of control and coming right at us from the sky? Indeed, if Rockland were your home, would you?
If it were within your jurisdiction today to order an immediate freeze of the Redesign pending: (1) the D.C. Circuit court decision; (2) the resolution of any appeals to follow; (3) your own study and analysis of the flaws and failures of the Redesign; then, Randy, I could very easily agree to your “hold your fire” suggestion. Up North, we litigators call that a “Standstill Agreement”. Professional courtesy. One counselor extends it to the other. As for its moniker in D.C. or VA, your local parlance may or may not vary. Besides, again, I’m not the voice of the litigation counsel here, just the voice of John Q. Public - the homeowner-guy actually threatened by FAA and Redesign - the stakeholder that Blakey, Sturgell and the band of aeromercantilists and their lobbyists refused to ever meaningfully acknowledge.
But because you, Randy Babbitt, can’t – yet – order a freeze on the Redesign, I can’t – yet – effect a full and complete standstill of Quiet Rockland’s continued efforts to urge and seek termination of the Redesign. Besides which, the Internet, the USPS, your own fax and e-mail wires, and Capitol Hill are literally crawling with aeromercantile lobbyists pushing their fetid-breathed money-grab Redesign upon you right now. I can hear and smell them, from here. My senses are acute. They are not holding THEIR proverbial fire. Therefore, my bottom line: Quiet Rockland and I don’t stop, unless and until the aeromercantile lobbyists and FAA both stop Redesigning.
So here above, is the real rub, and I believe reflective of the genius of your April 3 e-mail to me. You posed a conundrum. (By comparison, Sturgell never did. Sturgell would have had to look up the word “conundrum” to know what it means much less to know how to spell it. And when I misspell a word like “boar” or start a sentence with a preposition, it is intentional and artistic license).
I appreciate your letting me know where you are in the confirmation process, because in fact, you could read ten different press accounts and they would indicate ten different statuses. But I also need you to know that Quiet Rockland and I are already very familiar with the process of confirming, vel non, an FAA Administrator. The reasons I addressed my last letter to you at FAA HQ, were: (a) to have it waiting for you upon your already-heralded and presumed arrival to the work-site; and (b) to re-state for the record to a broader audience, just how thankful I am to President Obama for starting to clean house at 800 Independence. In any event, Quiet Rockland is now an old, tired hand at agency administrative practice and procedure. Among other groups like NJCAAN, Our Airspace, and AFSAP – (and this is public knowledge already) - we are the ones who cried out for the “Hold” on Bobby Sturgell’s confirmation. That Hold was subsequently imposed and then thankfully never thereafter removed up to and including Sturgell’s ejection from office. We are the ones who lobbied for Bobby Sturgell’s firing to occur prior to President Obama’s Inauguration. Another notch on the wing. Of course I know that Senators Lautenberg, Menendez, Schumer, and President Obama are the ones with the power – they are ones that did the heavy-lifting, to remove the threat that Sturgell posed, while sending him packing back to Maryland. But to paraphrase the old Shake ‘n Bake TV commercial, “…[And] I helped!”.
The outcome of litigation is always uncertain, even though I am confident that Rockland County and the other Petitioners will prevail against your FAA forebears in the proceeding before the D.C. Circuit and any appeals. Yet assuming God forbid a worst-case forensic scenario for Rockland - then, as a citizen, my only other means to effect justice and protect my well-being and indeed life may well in retrospect turn out to be urging Senators Lautenberg, Menendez, Schumer, Gillibrand and the other 46 Senators to condition your confirmation as FAA Administrator upon your pre-agreement to dismantle the Redesign and fire Steve Kelley from the project. Some may say, “Who in the blazes does Tormey think he is, trying to interpose himself in a confirmation process between Senators and other public officials?”. Who I think I am, is a citizen, a voter, an affected party, a stakeholder, and someone who will not and does not quit. The fact is, acting together with people arguably far more powerful than ourselves, we at Quiet Rockland already affected the outcome of one FAA Administrator’s confirmation vel non. We effected his removal. And if Bobby Sturgell could now stop washing seafood in DelMarVa long enough to tell the truth for 5 seconds – (not that I’m counting on it) – he would concede same and tell you so, too. I give you this account, because you may not yet be apprised of Quiet Rockland’s role in ending Bobby Sturgell’s “political career”. The aeromercantalists are too ashamed to admit what actually happened – when pressed, they will just mumble something about “the Northeast” and “politics” and “special interests” and “Frank” and “noisy activist groups”. To them I say, “Come On, F[EEL] The Noise!”. When Frank Lautenberg “Held” Sturgell, he was thereby expressing the will, not of “special interests”, but of We The People, including without limitation some of The Senator’s neighbors across the State Line to his North. Us.
For this reason, your use of the word “Hold” in your “Hold your fire” suggestion, is a gorgeous irony. Knowing how bright you are, from your correspondence and your reputation, I have to believe that you picked that word intentionally for my sake, (as opposed to Freudian slip). That way, you were the one to bring up the “Hold” topic first, not me. That takes the pressure off of me.
So empowered, I am therefore going to be brash enough to ask you to consider handling the Redesign matter in a different way. Rather than await a post-confirmation time-phase for you to study and conclude on Redesign, can you please instead accelerate the process, and study and conclude now? I am sure you know I will forward you every single page of documentation that I have ever archived on this matter, if you tell me you want and need it.
But we are at a very serious and important crossroads on Redesign right now. I believe the need for its resolution is more immediate than the cacophony of airline lobbyists would ever admit to you. Instead rather, watch Steve Kelley's and Jim May's frothy-mouthed panic. Many of us citizens believe that the Redesign itself as bum-rushed upon us by FAA, is a core issue integral to your own confirmation process and hearings. We think your decision to scrap Redesign is and should be the sine qua non of your confirmation – along with your commitment to end the partnership program and cozy relationship; restore aviation safety; and treat NATCA, the ATCs, and Inspectors and whistle-blowers properly.
Moreover, I understand that the Senate sua sponte will themselves bring the Redesign questions to you, pre-hearings - and that the Redesign topic will be one of the several topics broached by the Senators to you under oath at the hearings themselves. When those Senators ask you those questions, they are expressing our will, and our need to know. They will also want to know what you conclude, and I doubt that they are going to be receptive to a second request for a proverbial adjournment. After all, this is not a private club of airline executives in a cozy incestuous partnership program with a non-regulator, anymore. This is now We The People, consistent with your and your colleagues welcome commitment to maintain transparency in, and provide access to, government.
Quiet Rockland believes that we are entitled to know, prior to your confirmation hearings, whether or not you will terminate Redesign. We believe we are entitled to your decision as a precondition to your confirmation vel non as FAA Administrator. In fact, you and Quiet Rockland could make positive history here. You tell us you are scrapping Redesign. I in response will commission busloads of Rocklanders to ride down to D.C. as if in a Freedom Rally, holding signs demanding that the Senate confirm you as FAA Administrator. How could the Senate say ‘No’ to that? What better way to show “government by the people” to the rest of the country? Many say that Quiet Rockland already made history by dashing the hopes and career of a failed aviation bureaucrat named Bobby Sturgell. Though I happily harbor absolutely no guilt about that, I would rather Quiet Rockland be remembered for helping a smart friend get confirmed instead.
You may be aware that our neighbors to the South, NJCAAN, already publicly requested that Senator Lautenberg and other Senators Hold your confirmation pending FAA withdrawal of Redesign. Other Northeast advocacy groups, I am told, will follow suit. To date, I have insisted that Quiet Rockland “hold” off on making the same request to the Senators, pending further outcome of the conversation that you and I are still having. But naturally and for the foregoing reasons, I am sure you understand, Randy, why I need to protect myself and my community. Besides, asking a litigator to waive rights and remedies, is like trying to sneak a fastball by Frank Robinson, like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster, or like trying to sneak a drink by a newspaper reporter. I am thrilled at your responsiveness and courtesy, and I am thrilled that you intend to re-examine Redesign. But instead of my holding my proverbial fire, I need to ask you to do everything in your power to hold and preferably dismantle the Redesign now, even prior to your hearings. Let's thereupon both assume that the third type of hold thereby washes away.
Your further reply will be appreciated, and my continued thanks to you in the meantime. I know that it takes a big man to stand up to the callous aeromercantalists from within. But my community and I also know and believe that you are that very man.
Respectfully,
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY
________________________________________
From: Babbitt, Randy
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 9:10 AM
To: John J. Tormey III, Esq.;
Subject: RE: Terminate The Redesign: Quiet Rockland's Appeal To New FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt
John,
I did receive your email, but you should be aware that I have only been tapped by President Obama with his "intent to nominate". There has not yet been a formal nomination as of this time. Following an actual nomination, I will still need to be confirmed by the Senate, which will include hearings before the Senate Aviation Subcommittee.
Bottom line; I am likely at least 6 to 8 weeks away from the confirmation process.
With that as background, may I suggest that you "hold your fire" until the Senate concludes their deliberations and then, if confirmed, I would at least be in a position to review the options surrounding the airspace redesign.
We may ultimately "agree or disagree" on specifics, but I would like to move forward based on facts and findings from all sources, including yours, and would therefore give your views full consideration.
With kind regards,
Randy
Before printing think about your responsibility and commitment to the environment
-----Original Message-----
Subject: Terminate The Redesign: Quiet Rockland's Appeal To New FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt Law Office of John J. Tormey III, Esq. John J. Tormey III, PLLC 217 East 86th Street, PMB 221 New York, NY 10028 USA
(212) 410-4142 (phone)
(212) 410-2380 (fax)
Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
P.O. Box 918
Pearl River, NY 10965 USA
(845) 735-9691 (phone)
(845) 735-0476 (fax)
VIA E-MAIL:
and U.S. MAIL
Thursday, April 2, 2009
J. Randolph (Randy) Babbitt, Administrator - Office of the Administrator
U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
Orville Wright Building (FOB10A), Routing Code AOA-001, Room #1015
FAA National Headquarters - 800 Independence Ave., SW
Washington, DC 20591 USA
Re: Quiet Rockland Asks You To TERMINATE FAA's NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign ("Redesign")
Dear Randy:
You will recall that when I contacted you on Thursday, February 19, 2009 by e-mail about the FAA-planned Redesign, a time prior to the White House selecting you as FAA Administrator, you responded to me both by first name, and immediately. My community and I appreciate, and we have not forgotten, your professional responsiveness, courtesy, and willingness to listen.
My salutation to you above notwithstanding, I am forwarding this letter, itself a formal 49 U.S.C. §40103(b)(2) notice and appeal, to what I expect are your new agency coordinates - but I will also "bcc" this letter to your prior coordinates which I have on file for you as well.
I regret to see that the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign is still listed on the www.faa.gov website as an agency objective as of today. That's a mistake. But then again, as of today, FAA had yet to replace Lynne Osmus's photo with yours on the same website where it says "Administrator". It's time that FAA updated its website. My objective is not simply to get the Redesign pulled from the www.faa.gov website, but also to get the Redesign pulled from your and FAA's consideration entirely.
The Redesign must stop.
1. Litigation Links. You will also recall that when I replied to you on Friday, February 20, 2009 by (further) e-mail, I asked that you please not rely upon aviation publication accounts of the Redesign, in favor instead of the pleadings and sworn statements from the multi-plaintiff litigation currently pending before the D.C. Circuit. Further to that, I ask that you please review the links posted at the following Uniform Resource Locator (URL), to the extent that you may not by now have already had an opportunity to review those same litigation documents:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/03/lets-look-at-record-thanks-to-steve.html
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Let's Look At The Record - Thanks To Steve Taber And NJCAAN"
2. The Pleadings. What you will see in those web-linked documents, are the pleas of many communities including my own, and many individuals including me, wronged by past harmful and unlawful conduct by FAA officials at the behest of aeromercantile lobbyists who collectively care nothing about our safety and quality of life. Meanwhile, these people and FAA broke multiple federal laws including NEPA, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Clean Air Act; not to mention 49 U.S.C. §40103(b)(2) and our rights to due process under the Constitution of the United States of America. I'm confident that the D.C. Circuit will agree with me, with Rockland County, and with the other dozen-or-so petitioners who are currently suing FAA - the agency you inherited. If you come to divine differently, naturally I would want to know the specifics as to why.
3. Quiet Rockland. As you are also aware from our prior correspondence, Quiet Rockland is an organization that I co-founded based in Pearl River, New York. In our opposition to Redesign, we have fought FAA, USDOT and others, since July 2007. We have blown-through a few temporary Administrators and other FAA personnel adversaries, to reach this day - (none of whom, I note, ever gave me the courteous and prompt honest response that you did in your February 20, 2009 e-mail, Randy).
As for me, I am committed to lawfully fighting Redesign with every single fibre of my being until the day that I die. I'm not moving.
4. Our Numbers. Quiet Rockland acts consonant with the interests of thousands of citizens in Rockland County, NY and elsewhere: approximately 47,000 in the Town Of Orangetown, NY; 300,000 in Rockland County, NY; and a staggering 30,000,000 people affected by the planned Redesign in the Northeast. As I have observed in correspondence to President Obama and others, that's enough votes to carry a re-election in 2012. But more importantly than that, we are many human beings who have been in the past denied justice from within, by our own government. All of us in Quiet Rockland continue to be threatened - directly and adversely affected by the FAA's NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. Our movement started as a result of noise and other environmental concerns. We since have joined forces with whistle-blowers, ATCs, and other aviation professionals in continued efforts to foster aviation safety going forward. We ask you, please, for your personal attention and help. Your response is vitally important. We want you to join our numbers.
5. Terminate Redesign. Quiet Rockland asks that you immediately withdraw with prejudice the US$60,000,000+ failed boondoggle of the prior administration known as the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. It never made sense to put between 200-600 new jumbo-jets per day over densely-populated and minority-laden neighborhoods in Rockland County and our neighboring locales. We need environmental justice, a restoration of sensibility, and peace. Irrespective of however many airline lobbyists have sought to contact you this week promising the moon and stars, we need cancellation of the Sturgell/Peters/Mica Airspace Redesign. The litigation dollars already wasted on it are justification enough for the end of Redesign. That same money could have fed and educated children. The cited time-savings numbers per flight for Redesign were always illusory and fictitious, and no one from within the transportation community even takes them seriously anymore given the severe diminution in air-traffic resulting from recent economic market corrections. Crowded skies came from purposeful aeromercantile over-scheduling and over-saturation, premeditatively engineered to post hoc "justify" Redesign. We ask that you act as regulator and simply not let that charade happen again.
6. Accord Professional Respect To ATC's. Additionally, the American people including Quiet Rockland call for you to treat and pay all Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) and Aviation Inspectors fairly; protect them from threat and harm; and listen to them. NATCA's members need a real contract. Whistle-blowers need to be accorded protected status in gratitude for their personal courage. The ATCs and Inspectors are the true aviation professionals. Their input is vital to the future of American aviation safety, and they have suffered to a wholly-unacceptable degree during the failed Blakey/Lynne/Osmus FAA regime. We ask that you please make this country's amends to them, and now. It's what the citizens and traveling public want, too. FAA should take care of its people. FAA should stop taking care of lobbyists with no agenda but their own.
7. Instill The Culture Of Safety. The American public including Quiet Rockland must have a federal government that restores, to quote learned Congressman James Oberstar, a "Culture Of Safety" in aviation. An FAA "partnership program", on the other hand, wherein the Agency abdicates its legally-mandated function as regulator and instead adopts a cozy economic pandering relationship unabashedly calling the airlines its only "customers" - is a grotesque, harmful, and abysmal dynamic, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. The "customers" are, in point of fact, the passengers and the overflown people on the ground. Federal law requires consideration of both, a fact that the failed Sturgell/Osmus FAA conveniently and consistently forgot.
8. Re-Populate The Dysfunctional FAA. The failed Sturgell/Osmus FAA must immediately be re-populated with responsible federal officials. People like Airspace Redesign "Project Manager" Steve Kelley need to be fired. A former ATC who once worked a 6-fatality mid-air crash over Fairview and Cliffside Park, New Jersey (the falling metal and bodies landed in both towns), Steve Kelley must not be kept in a position wherein he is allowed to facilitate placement of traffic patterns over densely-populated neighborhoods. FAA publicist-enablers like Jim Peters who have overtly antagonized NATCA in the media must be given their walking papers now, too. The FAA FOIA unit, including people like Douglas Murphy and "Duke" Taylor, should be fired en masse. We now need government officials who tell us the truth.
9. The Rights Of The Overflown. The January 4, 2009 web-post on Tampa Bay Online gave us the happy news that President Obama would: "...direct the [A]dministrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to restore morale and improve working conditions and operations", and "appoint an FAA [A]dministrator who 'will not play politics' with the safety of American travelers".
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jan/04/na-obama-outlines-administration-goals/
We're grateful for this, and we have since asked President Obama to please add one additional goal of 6 words in length to that worthy mission-statement.
As you are aware, 49 United States Code §40103(b)(2) reads in relevant part:
"The Administrator [of the Federal Aviation Administration] shall prescribe air traffic regulations on the flight of aircraft (including regulations on safe altitudes) for -- ...(B) protecting individuals and property on the ground". [Emphasis added].
WE'RE the "individuals... on the ground" - in densely-settled and oft-minority-populated areas of Rockland County, New York and elsewhere in the Northeast. When FAA, Marion Blakey, and "Bobby" Sturgell proceeded with the cram-down of the FAA's Airspace Redesign over the past few years, they acted in purposeful disregard of - inter alia - the requirements of environmental justice, and the federal legal obligation to protect Rockland County citizens on the ground and protect our property. FAA, Blakey, Sturgell and their enablers violated 49 U.S.C. §40103(b)(2). To turn back this Blakey/Sturgell riptide of illegality, we ask that you acknowledge revision of the above-cited mission-statement with 6 words of added as text bold-underlined below:
"...the [A]dministrator of the Federal Aviation Administration will restore morale and improve working conditions and operations, and will not play politics with the safety of American travelers or those Americans overflown by them".
Quiet Rockland would appreciate your assurance that you will protect us overflown folks on the ground, too - and that you will act now to terminate the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign, and accomplish the other worthy goals cited hereinabove.
We look forward to your reply, Randy.
Respectfully,
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY