I'm not going to sit and defend what he said about our transfer process. It's obviously not solid in our current state.
But watching the whole hearing, Santa tied almost every answer back to inadequate staffing and funding.
1) He called attention to the Collaborative Resource Workgroup (CRWG) having been completed in January but still not included in the FAA's staffing plan.
2) He called out the FAA's accounting and finance smoke and mirrors of counting trainees in our total number of controllers to make it seem like we're more adequately staffed.
3) He called out FAA's hiring and said a lot of facilities would benefit from hiring locally.
32andBelow, I definitely think he had an opportunity to expand on that and was disappointed he declined to. I don't know if that was strategic? Public perception of ATC is very finnicky.
Unfortunately, the house committee are not there to hear about ATC locality pay or our inability to transfer. They want answers about safety, delays, and to play political theater about what can be done.