Amid significant ballyhooing, not to mention likely inflated economic impact numbers, Nashville International Airport (BNA) this month bowed new and heavily taxpayer-subsidized direct flights to Reykjavik, Iceland, and Dublin, Ireland.
How heavy are the combined public “incentives”? About $10 million “heavy” to Icelandair and Aer Lingus.
But tsk-tsk and tut-tut not, BNA officials admonish. The new flights are projected to generate up to $102.3 million in economic impact for Tennessee in the first year alone.
We’ll believe it when independent auditors confirm it.
Pittsburgh International Airport already has direct service to Reykjavik. It buttered Icelandair’s wings with $375,000 and other welcoming financial gifts. It claims a local economic benefit of $9 million annually. With no publicly released proof.
And it’s said to be negotiating with Aer Lingus for direct-to-Dublin flights. Given the experiences of other airports, expect any such deal to cost taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars — while exporting more millions abroad. Cleveland shelled out nearly $12 million.
Nashville officials liken the new flights to sliced bread and soft butter all rolled into one. But it’s taxpayers that are getting cut and greased and, yet again, taken for a slick corporate wealthfare ride.
Spotlight Pa reports that a panel of Commonwealth Court judges has ruled that emails and other communications between Pennsylvania lawmakers and the lobbyists can remain hidden from the public.
“The decision last month … means the state Legislature can continue to shield from public view written interactions they have with the lobbying industry, which spends tens of millions of dollars annually to shape public policy.”
Per the government media watchdog organization, which filed a lawsuit seeking to shine a light on the communications (and says it won’t appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court):
“Despite the scale of their spending, lobbyists in Pennsylvania are only required to disclose basic information about their work. They don’t, for instance, have to reveal which public officials they lobbied, or how much money they spent lobbying them. They also don’t have to reveal which issues they lobbied those public officials for.”
That’s about as antithetical to open, transparent and good governance as it gets.
Judge Stacy Wallace, writing for the court majority, said “the Senate is required to provide access to ‘legislative records’ … and ‘communications’ do not fall within the definition of ‘legislative records.’”
Ah, yes, nothing like a little parsing among bureaucratic friends to keep state secrets, eh? Skulduggery never had a better friend.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
