California goes tough on Flight Schools

[RyanShort1]

Ok, I know this perhaps should be in the GA subsection, but it's impact on flying warbirds and their pilots may be significant, as a lot of warbird pilots have other day jobs in aviation.

A member of another message board posted this a few days ago:

Got this overnight from one of my CFIs. Not being a member of NATA I can't access the actual report but if this is accurate then I don't see how many of our CFIs will choose to stay in business:

NATA has published a regulatory report on proposed rules issued by the Bureau of Private Post Secondary Education in California . These rules, prompted by the passage last year of Assembly Bill 48, will regulate the operation of flight training facilities. All flight training operations, including independent certified flight instructors (CFIs), will be required to comply with the provisions of these rules, including such provisions as the requirement for producing and printing a "college catalogue" type of document. Flight training facilities have until August 1 to comply with these rules, including paying a $5,000 application fee and submitting audited financial statements from 2009, or they will no longer be permitted to operate in the state. Other provisions of the proposed rules include:

Only CFIs with three years of experience in flight will be allowed to instruct students, unless they can demonstrate an equivalence of other experience factors
All flight training facilities will be required to submit a $1,000 annual fee and 0.75% of their gross revenue to the state
Flight training facilities' curriculums must receive approval from the state
These proposed rules are open to public comment until June 7, 2010. Additionally, the Bureau of Private Post Secondary Education will hold a public comment forum on these proposed rules in Sacramento , CA , on June 7, 2010.

NATA is very concerned about the negative impact these regulations would have on flight training and urges all impacted members to submit comments.

Another bit:

Dear School Administrator:

On October 11, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill (AB) 48 (Portantino Chapter 310
Statutes of 2009). AS 48 is known as the Private Postsecondary Education Act of 2009 (“Act”). The Act
establishes the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (“Bureau”) within the Department of
Consumer Affairs. The Act became operative on January 1, 2010. The text of the Act is available online
at www.bppe.ca.gov.

The former Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education Reform Act of 1989 classified schools
approved by the Federal Aviation Administration as exempt. However, the California Private
Postsecondary Education Act of 2009 does not provide an exemption for schools approved by the
Federal Aviation Admin stration. Consequently, your institution is not exempt and will need to obtain
Ca fornia State approval to operate in order to comply with the new law.

The Act requires all institutions that are not approved or exempt to submit an application for approval
within six (6) months of the application becoming available. We anticipate the application will be available
in February, 2010, following the adoption of the emergency regulations.
We encourage you to sign up for e-mail updates on the above website. Once you have signed up, you will
receive information and forms, including the application, by e-mail notification.
Section 94809(c) of the Act requires institutions operating, without a valid approval to operate, notify
students seeking to enroll, of the status of the institution’s pending application. The Bureau recommends
the following language for this required notice: “This institution’s application for approval to operate
has not yet been reviewed by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education.”

Please Note: If your institution does not have a valid approval to operate and continues to operate under
the Act, the institution may not use the terms “approval,” “approval to operate,” or “approved to operate”,
without clearly stating that the institution’s application for approval has not been reviewed by the Bureau.

You may address questions and correspondence to:

Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education
P.O. Box 980818
West Sacramento, CA 95798
By E-mail to: bppve@dca.ca.gov
Phone: 916-574-7720
Sincerely,
Joanne Wenzel
Staff Services Manager, III

And one more bit..

Well, just got off the telephone with John Pfeifer, AOPA's Representative for California. The short answer ... we have trouble here in River City!

John said that during his personal visit to Sacramento he went directly to the offices of some of the legislators. He discovered that Rep. Niello (R-5th Dist) intentionally lined out the flight school exemption when the new rules were composed. His district was the site of a large Silver State Helicopters training facility and when SSH went bankrupt, several of his constituents lost a lot of money and complained to him. This was his method of "being responsive."

While the game plan still includes AOPA and NATA attending the public hearing on June 7th and presenting the case for flight schools and independent CFIs to be excluded from the oppressive rules, it is likely that it will take legislative action to accomplish the task. Fortunately ... or not ... the rules as written won't take effect until August 1st. However, if your application (and fee) haven't been submitted by then you are no longer authorized to conduct "aviation training."

With this in mind, all Californians need to take a deep breath and get prepared to participate in a coordinated, educated, and logical effort to get our local Representatives and Senators to come to the aid of the aviation training activity. I'll be creating a web page on my site with links to the actual Assembly Bill creating the Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE), the BPPE's regulatory language that is on the table, Representative and Senators contact information.

This is a truly an issue that affects all of us ... imagine being unable to get a BFR because all the CFIs at your airport quit in the face of a mandatory $5000 Bureau certification fee! Sure, California is leading the way in idiocy and unintended consequences, but if they are successful and it generates even a dollar of additional income you can bet other states will follow.

Aeronautically,
{name removed}
flightfix.com

Anyway, I suggest that if you are a pilot in California, you find out what you can about this right away and start getting a bit noisy about it. Otherwise, your next flight review might be a LOT more expensive and hard to get.

Ryan

[Mudge]

If it passes, I say, "Screw 'em". Move across the border. I'm sure there are students in AZ, NV, and OR. See how the legislators like losing ALL the flight school business taxes.

OK...OK...I know that's not too realistic but I'm pretty fed up with governments screwing everybody just to make the $$$ that they pi$$ away. That goes for County, State, and Federal.

Rant off.

Mudge the pi$$ed

[warbird1]

Wow, what a crappy deal! Thanks for that bit of info, Ryan.

A few questions:

What do they use as the basis to determine whether a Flight School is located in California? Is it where the Flight School's business address is, it's actual physical location, or where the training is accomplished? For example, could one have an LLC and address in a more business friendly state like Nevada, while operating and training in California?

Another example. AFAIK, the Collings foundation is headquartered in Massachusetts. If they checked somebody out in the TP-51 in California would they be exempt or not? What about "flight experiences" that are given in Californa where the pilots flying the aircraft are CFI's and let the "flight experiencer" log legal flight time in the airplane?

Lots of questions, but this appears to be a whole can of worms. Once again, law-makers have made blanket laws without considering the unintended consequences of everybody potentially affected. Pretty standard for lawmakers these days, I'm afraid.

[Randy Haskin]

Yet another reason (next to their firearm laws) not to live in the south portion of the left coast.

[51fixer]

Gov-ment,
They do a great job of taking an industry that is struggling, Aviation, and a specific portion of that which has existed in a lot of cases on hand to mouth finances, and then
now lets make it better by adding large costs, bureaucratic oversight and printing material that may become obsolete if you have FAA changes, change aircraft types or decide to expand to higher end aircraft.
Glad I left in 1995.
Back then you had to pay a yearly fine to operate an APU in Southern Calif.
Rich

[Forgotten Field]

Absolutely wrong! I hope flight schools in CA get so expensive that people go to other states to fly. Who do you think is going to pay that .75% tax- the flight schools? Short sighted. They already get income tax/corporate tax/sales tax off the schools, sales of materials, and employee income. And that's not enough to run the state into the ground. I'd leave the state.

[CAPFlyer]

Example #1 of why referrendums are bad.

I feel sorry for those of you stuck out there trying to make a living.

I'd leave the state.

Don't get everyone to leave. We've got enough California Drivers here in Texas already.

[flyboyj]

A few things...

I can see this being challenged in a federal court as as it seems the state of California is imposing requirements that conflict with the Code of Federal Regulations. The city of Santa Monica has been fighting with the Feds for years on who has jurisdiction over jets and noise coming from the airport. Additionally I don't see how thy can enforce this on small Part 61 operations, especially with instructors who use their privately own planes for instruction and may have one or two students at a time being taught covertly. Not to go on a political tangent but this is another example of the loony politicians in "Kommiefornia" who will go to desperate measure to tax business and its because of situations like this the state is the US version of Greece.

This is another example to me that 7 years ago I made the right decision to leave California. Great time for California Lawmakers to drive away business from their state!!!

[famvburg]

I was thinking along those lines as well. It's been about 15+ years since I've been involved with cropdusting operations, but ISTR about the early - mid '90s, La. was going to require ALL ag planes to have 12" N-numbers if they were already painted with 3", like a lot of AgTrucks were. The consensus was that the state was overstepping their boundaries & the aircraft met FAA requirements, so the states 12" reqirement couldn't be enforced. Ms. may have attempted something similar, but I'm just not sure. OTOH, this is similar to a lot of cities &/or local airport boards that require shops or even a single A & P to have liability insurance before they turn a wrench there. They either don't work on a/c there, sneak around, or maybe make enough to break even at the end of the year. And then the powers that be wonder why there's nothing happening at the airports any more.

A few things...

I can see this being challenged in a federal court as as it seems the state of California is imposing requirements that conflict with the Code of Federal Regulations. The city of Santa Monica has been fighting with the Feds for years on who has jurisdiction over jets and noise coming from the airport. Additionally I don't see how thy can enforce this on small Part 61 operations, especially with instructors who use their privately own planes for instruction and may have one or two students at a time being taught covertly. Not to go on a political tangent but this is another example of the loony politicians in "Kommiefornia" who will go to desperate measure to tax business and its because of situations like this the state is the US version of Greece.

This is another example to me that 7 years ago I made the right decision to leave California. Great time for California Lawmakers to drive away business from their state!!!

[Xrayist]

I guess when your state is, what, 550 billion in debt, you have to start somewhere!

[davidbray]

I guess when your state is, what, 550 billion in debt, you have to start somewhere!

Illinois is avoiding going this far into debt by just not paying anyone or anything. It works really well. Just ask my sister and mom who are teachers!

[gary1954]

Brick by brick, they are tearing America apart.
Who TF are these people, and where TF did they come from.
Surely, theses aren't Americans, but Socialist Communist Pigs.
I say

[sdennison]

So if you live in California and want to be a CFI, you have to move out of state for three years to gain experience and then return to apply for sanction? What a crock 'o shiite!

[RandolphB]

I've read through this bill, and it's utterly confusing (as are most things government seems to do..). I'm guessing the original post is a result of some legal consul realizing what it all means. From what I can tell, this would also apply to all sorts of other teaching, i.e., karate studios, personal fitness trainers, gyms, music instruction, etc.

If anyone finds more or the issue, I would like to know about it. While I am currently working towards my A & P to change my 9-5 job, this law looks like it affects my current job...and those of lots of other people I know. I'll be calling lawyers on Monday to see how it affects me.

I wonder if the assemblywoman from CHINO, who wrote this bill, realizes how badly this could affect her own district out at the AIRPORT?

[RickH]

News Release for immediate publication:

The dumbing down of Californians is now underway through the abolition of teachers in all professions !

What a bunch of idiots.... or is that an oxymoron ?