(CBS) Small, Rural Airports Get Big Payouts While Safety Violations at Major National Airports Get Little Attention
If you want to know your federal stimulus package dollars are already having an impact, you might want to look up. The small planes you spot could be bound for one of the hundreds of tiny airports that have landed big money from the government, as CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.
In upstate New York, there's a tiny airport owned by the Williamson Flying Club, a private social club for local pilots.
Club President Joe Ebert is pleased to show off their brand new $400,000 runway, paid for by your tax dollars.
It's all new, he says, and it's all part of $1.1 billion in stimulus money handed out to more than 300 airports around the nation.
"We were looking for projects that airports in areas around the country desperately needed to be done for safety and security concerns," said Department of Transportation press secretary Sasha Johnson.
Yet some of the projects hardly seem urgent. And taxpayers may be surprised to find "that airports they never heard of in communities they will never visit are getting some of the maximum stimulus grants," says Michael Grabell of the non-profit journalism group ProPublica.
In fact, more than $350 million is being spent on little-used airports or ones catering to recreational flyers, corporate jets and remote communities. - CBS News Story
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