As it should be. Actually, it should be the city or airports duty. Certainly not the Federal government.
Funny how City and Local Government tends to follow National Government - strange coincidence
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Municipal airports should all be funded by local monies. I agree.
Here’s the thing...your opinion is fine in a vacuum, but you need to consider a few other things:
1) Aviation policy is federal...like it or not. Quite frankly it has to be. Commercial air travel didn’t exist and was inconceivable in the 18th century. It should be Federal jurisdiction. I can go into the reasons if you’d like but it should be pretty self-evident that having 50 different sets of aviation regulations would be detrimental to air travel (as much as we hate them, the FAA and Transport Canada provide streamlined, concise regulation that allows a pilot in California to understand the regulations in Maine without having to learn a whole bunch of additional esoteric laws to keep his license).
2) Stemming from 1, the decision about which airports should have control towers and which shouldn’t is based on traffic volume and type. It is a decision based on traffic patterns that cross state lines. This in and of itself makes it clear that the most efficient way to run air traffic is for it to be federal government jurisdiction.
3) However, I think that air traffic services people should be employed by the airport’s controlling authority (although licensed federally just like aviators) and not by the FedGov.
So all in all, you’re half right and I’ve given you a host of reasons why it will never happen. The airports would say “Well you say I have to have a controller but you won’t fund it...so I’m not going to have one.” I think this could be more effectively solved by just saying, any airport that has a monthly average traffic volume of X or greater needs Y ATC structure.