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Aviation Administration and municipalities in the matter of
drones. No blanket federal rule about the increasingly popular
remote-controlled flying devices would, he told the New York
Times, address the unique concerns of his city, a target of
terrorist attacks. (“FAA Drone Laws Start to Clash With Stricter
Local Rules,” 27 December)
Frank Carollo, Mr Garodnick’s opposite number in the City
Council of Miami, voiced a similar concern. “We understand
the FAA regulates drones, but the FAA doesn’t have bodies on
the ground to enforce their rules,” he told the Times’s Cecilia
Kang. “That is why I believed Miami had to have its own rules.”
Their objections grew out of the announcement by the FAA
of new rules requiring registration in a national database
by users of recreational drones. But the federal agency’s
renewed assertion of ultimate control over the airspace did
not occur in a vacuum. Local and state lawmakers, concerned
about the safety and privacy risks posed by drones, had
already been passing rules about the machines at a rapid
pace.
More than 20 states approved drone laws last year, as did
major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, with
many of the regulations placing tough restrictions on flying
areas and clamping down on the use of drones for snooping
purposes. Now, as noted by Ms Kang, the intervention of
the FAA is frustrating local lawmakers who complain that the
agency wants them to back off their own rules even as it is
seen as too lenient with drone users.
Lawmakers, she wrote, say the agency’s drone rules do not
“go as far as many states and municipalities that are explicitly
banning flights within cities and over homes, strengthening
privacy protections, and imposing steep criminal and financial
penalties on violators”. On 17 December, the FAA published
a fact sheet on federal laws that would preempt local rules.
Its position is that, as the top regulator, it should handle
any bans on flights or permits for drone pilots. Because it
was given that authority by Congress, the agency claims,
many local or state drone rules would not stand up to legal
challenge.
› If, as seems likely, the stand-off should reach the courts,
there are interested parties beyond the principals. In
particular, any rollback by the FAA of local drone regulations
would benefit one group: tech companies. In 2015, Amazon
and Google, among others, dispatched dozens of lobbyists to
visit aviation committees in Congress. Wrote Ms Kang, “The
companies want a light touch by regulators to help give their
drone efforts the widest possible latitude.”
› Tom McMahon, a vice-president for the Association for
Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a lobbying
group that represents drone makers, gave the Times his
interpretation of FAA jurisdiction over the nation’s airspace.
“That means from the top of blades of grass to infinity,” Mr
McMahon said. “So I think and I hope you will start to see
some rollback in these local regulations.”
Dorothy Fabian, Features Editor (USA)