Wow. Talk about passive-aggressive behavior.
The same Allegheny County Airport Authority that so aggressively defends every cluster cluck in which it becomes mired could barely squeak out like a newborn kitten that the cost of the Terminal Modernization Program at Pittsburgh International Airport suddenly had exploded, again, this time by about $170 million.
A project that was sprung on the public and began life costing $1.1 billion, then swelled to $1.39 billion, now is estimated to cost $1.57 billion. That’s a total increase of nearly half-a-billion dollars or 42.7 percent.
And how did the Airport Authority inform the public? In a hilariously constructed “story” on its BlueSky News website.
The headline?
“New terminal construction passes halfway mark.”
The big story lede?
“Construction on the Terminal Modernization Project (TMP) at Pittsburgh International Airport passed the halfway point over the summer and remains on track for completion in 2025.”
The big second paragraph?
“In recent weeks, workers on the TMP poured concrete for the roadway bridge that will carry traffic to and from the new landside terminal, completed the high roof steel, and began installation of the bridge that will connect the new terminal to the existing airside terminal.”
The big first quote in paragraph three?
“We are building the airport that Pittsburgh deserves and which will serve our families, friends and neighbors for generations to come,” said Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority (ACAA), which operates PIT.”
Oh, and by the way, notes the fourth paragraph:
“Airlines at PIT have unanimously approved a revised $1.57 billion budget for the TMP. The TMP is funded mostly through long-term bonds that the ACAA will pay back from its operating revenue, most of which is paid by the airlines through rates and charges.”
In the news biz, it’s called “burying the lede,” typically the product of an inexperienced reporter and an equally inexperienced (or lazy) editor.
But in the flacking business (that is, the public relations business), the tactic is intentionally deployed as a deception. Yes, this organization and that must release the bad news. But they decide to obfuscate it as well as they can.
And that’s exactly what BlueSky News, the propaganda arm of the Airport Authority, did. It slapped a mundane headline on its “story,” then offered up three equally mundane paragraphs before popping the cork on the 12 percent terminal project cost increase.
The hope is that very busy real reporters and editors will read only the headline and write it off as just much PR drivel. And the lead paragraph and the next two offer up even more drivel, just in case those busy editors and reporters should read them – the place where the crux of the “news story” should be.
It’s about as dishonest and unprofessional as “professional communicators” can behave.
Equally bad is the Airport Authority’s continuing parsing of how the terminal will be funded. It keeps saying, as it did in last week’s “story,” that “no local or state tax dollars are being used to pay for the project.”
But in the very next clause, it admits the authority “has been awarded $23.5 million in federal grants under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
What, no local or state taxpayer money is a part of those grants?
And as the Post-Gazette’s Mark Belko, who obviously read the entire misleading BlueSky News story, reminds in his story (headlined “Taking off: Price tag for airport modernization jumps 12% as costs for materials escalate”), while the airlines will pay a significant portion of the new terminal’s costs, there’s plenty of other public money in this deal.
“In addition, the authority has targeted a $6 customer facility charge paid by people who rent vehicles at the terminal, state gambling revenues, and money generated by natural gas drilling on airport property to help cover the cost.”
That customer facility charge on rental vehicles is a tax paid by the public.
Those state gambling revenues are a tax collected from casino operators.
And that money generated by natural gas drilling within the PIT footprint is public money, too.
As we’ve repeatedly stressed, any money collected or disbursed by the Airport Authority, a public authority, is public money.
We would remind the Airport Authority of the words of 19th-century Scottish author Sir Walter Scott:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
Sad to say, the Airport Authority won’t admit to such behavior because that long has been its default position. And that is a position wholly anathema to the execution of sound public policy.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinsitute.org).
