How do you expect them to pay for the airport operational and capital costs if could not levey fees?

Remember the state of repair that the Federal government left the airports in when they were turned over to the local authorities (there were fees back then too when the Feds ran things). For the most part the authorites have been reasonable in their expansion plans.

For example check out this - Edmonton International "Airport will raise its own funds to complete the work and will not be increasing the airport improvement fee"

I am not saying that all rates and fees are reasonabel but they are needed as airports are expensive services that we need and they have to paid for somehow - remember they receive zero money from any level of government.