Looks more to me that that was a ruling on a point of legal or accounting order, rather than because the FAA particularly thought SMO was an important piece of aviation infrastructure. If grant money hadn't been involved, do you think the FAA would have been involved at all?
As for taxes, we all pay them, you can keep living in your fantasy socialist world where the state takes care of you and everything is provided free of charge, and the rest of us will live in the real world.
I'm done with this.