[pwthornton]

It is kind of wild that airports themselves don't straight up pay for this. I can understand not wanting to privatize it, as they'll be liable to half-ass it, but surely a usage fee on flights would cover it?

I wonder if this is because bigger airports near major cities and businesses would basically be subsidizing tons of airports in the middle of nowhere, and some people don't want to admit that?

[nandomrumber]

Most airports in the middle of nowhere aren’t controlled.

There are something like 530 ATC towers in the USA out of 5000 or so public airports. 20,000 if we include anything that can be described as an airstrip.

Your wider point still stands though, probably something like 20% of the airports handle 80% of the traffic.