Hold the phone 1!
The Post-Gazette reports that the Allegheny County Airport Authority board has approved a one-year operating agreement with Breeze Airways to fly to four locations out of Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) beginning in July.
The deal calls for Breeze to pay just under $27,000 annually to lease office space for its ticketing operations. Well, it is nice to see Breeze paying for something.
But – and this is a big but – the Airport Authority continues to refuse to release what kind of taxpayer incentives it’s also paying Breeze. The reason? The deal has yet to be finalized, the P-G says.
Two points and two questions:
Details of any such deals should be made public when offered. The public has every right to know before such agreements are signed, sealed and delivered. (That said, airlines never should be subsidized to “serve” any airport.)
The approved one-year operating agreement doesn’t include this incentive package? This is a side deal?
Various media sources report that various airports around the country are paying Breeze millions of dollars combined to lure it to their airports.
That’s daft. Airlines, especially those such as Breeze, owned by a very wealthy person, should risk their own money – 100 percent – in pursuit of their private profit.
Socializing any airline’s risk is horrible public policy. Taxpayers have no business being turned into venture capitalists.
Hold the phone 2!
Also reports the P-G, from action take at the Airport Authority’s June 18 meeting:
“A settlement with former board member Robert Lewis to pay $150,000 of his legal fees in litigation involving OneJet, a bankrupt regional business carrier that flew from the airport. Mr. Lewis, who invested in the airline while he was on the board, was sued by another group of investors who were owed money by the carrier.
“The settlement relates to the authority’s insurance coverage for board members, solicitor Jeffrey Letwin said, and releases it from any future claims. Neither Mr. Lewis nor his attorney could be reached for comment.”
Four questions and salient point:
A “settlement”? Did Lewis, after being sued by investors, sue the board for refusal to cover his legal fees? Or threaten to? Well?
That said, what business does a public authority have to pay any legal fees for a board member, in a clear conflict of interest, who invested in an airline that received public subsidies then took that very public for a ride on the take-the-money-and-run side?
Simply put, it does not.
Hold the phone 3:
At the same June 18 meeting, it is reported that the Airport Authority approved “a 10-year lease with Cumberland Additive for a 3D printer.”
“The Pflugerville, Texas, firm is expanding its operations to Neighborhood 91, the hub for additive manufacturing being built on airport land west of the terminal,” the P-G reports.
Again, the public has no business being turned into venture capitalists. If Cumberland Additive wants to set up shop in the much ballyhooed – and already heavily publicly financed Neighborhood 91 – the onus must be on it to buy, next to its physical plant, what most assuredly is its largest capital outlay.
Question:
What’s next, the public buying a continuous caster for a steel mill?
Yes, indeed, hold that phone! And let’s see if we get somebody – anybody – on the blower with any sense of propriety to call out this continuing molestation of the public purse, supposedly for the “public good.”
Oh, never mind – all you’ll get will be a perpetual busy signal.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
