Word of the Allegheny County Airport Authority’s lawsuit against OneJet for not living up to terms of the authority’s $1 million corporate wealthfare package should lead to renewed scrutiny of not just airlines seeking handouts but also of authority operations.
First up is the authority board’s decision giving CEO Christina Cassotis carte blanche-power to dole out public money to airlines in return for service to and from Pittsburgh International Airport.
No single person in any government organization should have such unchecked purse powers. A board empaneled to check autocratic powers should not be checking off on them.
Second up should be a refresher course in conflicts of interest, perceived and real, for the authority board.
To wit, not only did Airport Authority Vice Chairman Robert Lewis accept a seat on OneJet’s board of directors, it turns out he invested in the airline after Cassotis gave the airline its big subsidy.
Some have rationalized Lewis’ OneJet board position as a great way for the Airport Authority to keep an eye on its “investment.” Others have defended Lewis by noting that, because Cassotis granted the subsidy on her own, he did not have a vote in the subsidy.
Sorry, but no. Sound public policy should proscribe even the appearance of conflicts of interest. Anything less only breeds suspicion, and rightly so. No board member should have any business with the airport or airlines that use it.
You might also recall how Allegheny County officials defended a $3 million taxpayer subsidy to British Airways by claiming an annual economic impact of $57 million.
That number was thrown around on July 25, the day it was announced that direct Pittsburgh-to-London flights were returning in April 2019 after a two-decade absence.
While the media reported the economic benefits number without question, research by Allegheny Institute President Jake Haulk exposed it as specious at best (in Policy Brief Vol. 18, No. 31, published last Wednesday).
But there’s a back story:
It turns out a consultant’s formal memo – undated — that made the $57 million claim didn’t even exist at the time of the claim. In fact, it wasn’t delivered to the Airport Authority until Aug. 2, eight days after the number was cited and six days after this think tank sought the documentation to vet the claim.
Authority spokesman Bob Kerlik says the agency received “preliminary data on July 20.” That data, and data found in the subsequent memo, were extrapolated from a larger 2017 economic impact study, he says.
But Haulk found that study, too, was filled with a variety of specious assumptions. Think ridiculously overstated “multiplier effect” numbers, for one.
The very troubling kicker here is that it took the Airport Authority 22 days and lots of tap-dancing to fully disclose all the particulars of its $57 million British Airways economic impact claim.
They came in dribbles and drabs and hems and haws and only after the authority was pressed repeatedly. And when the memo was finally produced and its claims analyzed, the dubiety of the economic impact claim was exposed. Simply put, the claim was flawed. And badly.
The Allegheny County Airport Authority has a serious and growing credibility problem. So much so that nothing it claims can be or should be taken at face value.
It was a few decades ago that the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Politics published a longish white paper titled “Invisible governments: Pennsylvania’s municipal authorities.”
Three quotes stand out from the study.
The first: “These authorities are so much a part of the landscape that they are invisible.”
The second: “The deeper one delves, the more temptation there is to throw up one’s hands in despair.”
And the third: “Apparently the term ‘authority’ emerged from an ironic English critic who thought the new type of agency” – developed, it should be reminded, to limit corruption and political machinations – “had too much authority.”
As the recent behavior of the Allegheny County Airport Authority illustrate, the public can ill afford to allow the actions of authorities to become invisible. Neither can they afford to throw up their hands in despair.
For authorities that promulgate unsound economic behavior in the name of economic development are abusing their charter and are anathema to sound public policy.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
