We don’t know what’s worse, the Allegheny County Airport Authority paying out $2.6 million over eight years — some of which could be considered hush money –to make certain employees go away, or the authority having the temerity to defend trying to hide those payments.
Either way, it’s the latest unflattering development to come out about a public agency that’s long been out of control.
The Post-Gazette’s intrepid journo Mark Belko broke the story on Sunday:
“The authority has doled out severance pay to 96 employees, including top managers and other key contributors, since [Airport Authority CEO Christina] Cassotis took the chief executive job in 2015, a Post-Gazette review has found.
“The $2.6 million in payments have ranged from a high of $187,200 to the authority’s former chief operating officer to a low of $5,340, with the average being $27,506. One employee received what was described as a ‘health care continuation.’”
And while some employment experts told the P-G such payments “are a commonly used tool when management wants to make personnel changes and doesn’t want pushback from unhappy employees,” there is a decided stench to some of these.
In a statement released after it released a by-the-numbers-only accounting of such deals (in response to a P-G request), the Airport Authority says severance payments went to employees it let go during the pandemic-induced severe downturn in air travel.
But, “Some former employees maintain that their severance agreements were negotiated after they fell out of favor with Ms. Cassotis or members of her team in the months or years after she took the helm.”
To wit, the P-G says one employee “maintained that he ended up being dismissed after raising questions about an ambitious terminal modernization proposal — work has since begun on the project — and about spending decisions such as the $1 million investment in OneJet, a regional business airline that later went bankrupt.”
“Many of the workers who received severance declined to comment because they signed nondisclosure agreements that could jeopardize those packages if they talked,” the P-G’s Belko reports.
Can you say “hush money”?
Just as bad, however, is that the Post-Gazette had to file a Right-to-Know request with the commonwealth to shake loose the information it did obtain. Again, from the P-G report:
“The Post-Gazette filed a Right-to-Know request for the information in October 2021, seeking names of employees who received severance, the amount they were paid, and the departure date.
“Authority officials initially denied the request but were overruled by the state’s Office of Open Records, which ordered the release of all the information requested by the newspaper except for some records showing the reason for each employee’s departure.
“The authority lost appeals before Allegheny County Common Pleas Court and in the state Commonwealth Court. Rather than appeal to the state Supreme Court, the authority relinquished the information in November.”
The Airport Authority initially defended its attempts to hide such information, arguing it was a matter of protecting personnel records. But that’s pure buncombe.
As Melissa Melewsky, the media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, told the P-G, the payout information clearly was a matter of public record.
And as the P-G’s attorney noted, “Records of payments made by government agencies to current or former employees are public because the public has a right to know how the government spends its money.”
Oh, and another point: The Airport Authority has a maddeningly deflective habit of arguing that either “no taxpayer dollars” or “no local taxpayer dollars” are involved when called on the carpet for dubious outlays. And it did so again in its deceptive, half-measure response to the Post-Gazette’s seeking a full accounting of severance payouts.
“While the authority noted in its statement on severance pay that no taxpayer money is involved, Ms. Melewsky said it’s still public money,” the P-G reported. “’It’s money that goes to a public agency for the benefit of the public even if it’s not generated by a tax,’ she said.”
The Allegheny County Airport Authority is a public agency. Any money it receives and or disburses, no matter the source, is public money. And the public has every right to know everything about it.
The Airport Authority’s attempts to hide its hush-money payments — whether by abusing the Right-to-Know process or invoking dubiously legal non-disclosure agreements – is a slap to good governance and the public weal.
The Airport Authority is in no way attempting to “protect” any employees. But it is attempting to protect its rear end.
Enough really is enough from this continuing clown show.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
