49 U.S.C. § 47173 — Airport funding of FAA staff

(a) The FAA Administrator may accept sponsor funds, including funds provided under section 47114(c), to hire staff or consultants to timely process, review, and complete environmental work for airport development; conduct special environmental studies for federally funded airport projects; support approved part 150 noise measures; support FAA mitigation in a record of decision or finding of no significant impact; and handle environmental work for new or amended flight procedures, including performance-based navigation, required-navigation-performance, and area-navigation procedures. (b) With the sponsor’s agreement, instead of the sponsor paying from section 47114 apportionments, the Administrator may transfer funds that would otherwise be apportioned to the sponsor into the Administrator’s activity account. (c) Except for subsection (b) transfers, accepted funds are offsetting collections credited to the account financing the related work, available only for that work and until spent. (d) Funds may not be accepted or transferred in a fiscal year when FAA does not allocate at least its fiscal-year-2002 spending on the subsection (a) activities, excluding the specified 2002 appropriations-act amounts.