Hearing features debate over airport authority

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Friday, November 17, 2006 10:41 PM PST ∞

SAN DIEGO -- In what sounded like a rhetorical question 10 days after voters overwhelmingly rejected the San Diego airport authority's call for a Miramar airport, a state senator held a four-plus hour meeting Friday to ask, "The regional airport authority: Is it working for San Diego?"

State Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, hinted again that she planned to author legislation -- soon -- to reshape the beleaguered airport authority; perhaps stripping it of its land-use powers, or erasing or downsizing the $100,000 a year salaries of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority's top officers.

Kehoe and state Assemblyman George Plescia, R-La Jolla, held a similar public hearing last month to broach the same subject. Information was collected at the October meeting, and used to create a list of 14 recommendations outlined at Friday's meeting that could be used to shape any bill Kehoe and Plescia might push forward to reform the four-year-old airport authority.

The list of recommendations included exploring options to keep the authority alive, but create oversight committees to watch its finances; to take away the authority's current land-use planning power and give it to another agency -- such as the San Diego Association of Governments -- and to cut the number of authority board members from nine to seven.

"My intention is to get information in these hearings to develop a bill that would reform the airport authority's structure," Kehoe said at a break in Friday's meeting. "I think the vote (on the authority's ballot measure to make Miramar a new regional airport) shows clearly that the airport board does not have a good plan, nor a clear message to San Diegans about what to do about the airport."

The authority was created by the Legislature to do three specific things: to operate San Diego's Lindbergh Field; find a new potential spot to build a bigger airport; and to put a ballot initiative on that site selection before voters by Nov. 7, 2006.

The authority came under heavy criticism before and after the election for being "out of touch" -- not only with voters, but with the county, its 18 cities, and regional planning agencies -- by recommending siting a new airport at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Voters rejected that ballot plan Nov. 7, 61.98 percent to 38.02 percent.

Plescia did not attend Friday's meeting at the California Department of Transportation office, leaving Kehoe to chair the hearing and moderate the panel, which included a representative from the state's legislative analyst's office, airport authority board members, and a UCLA professor.

Marianne O'Malley, a fiscal and policy analyst from the legislative analyst's office said the authority had the "most complicated" governance structure she had ever studied -- a structure that could make it less accountable to the public for its actions.

O'Malley said that most airports in the state are owned and operated by cities, and that the authority was one of just two authority's created with the single purpose of running an airport.

They included appointees from the governor's and sheriff's office. It had a two-tier arrangement of board members: three members earned $100,000 a year while the remaining six earned stipends of $100 per meeting.

O'Malley also said the fact that the authority had control over land-use planning around all of San Diego County's 16 civilian and military air bases -- at the same time that it operated Lindbergh Field -- could create "conflicts of interest."

However, O'Malley also said that turning the authority's land-use powers over to the San Diego Association of Governments could prove problematic. The association is the regional transportation planning agency. But, O'Malley said, its board membership was also appointed, creating "accountability" problems. And, she said, the association has "historically been reluctant to pressure local agencies to change any of their land-use policies" -- which she said could lead to city-dominated, watered-down airport planning.

Four authority board members, meanwhile, defended their agency.

Outgoing members Joe Craver, Paul Peterson, Paul Nieto and Bob Maxwell urged Kehoe to allow the agency to continue its work. Nieto said the authority had increased Lindbergh's revenues and had made it more financially efficient over the last four years. And, he said, the authority had plans to improve Lindbergh now that voters said it should be the regional airport into the future.

Peterson said, "It (the authority) is working very well. I think it's just done an outstanding job. Good staff, and I think they have a great board."

Professor Steve Erie said that San Diego County was running the risk of becoming an economic backwater because of unresolved questions of how to improve Lindbergh's capacity to handle more traffic. Erie said that increased traffic is both expected -- and a key to serving and attracting job-producing businesses.

Erie also said that planning around airports had to include ground transportation -- building roads, freeways, high-speed rail, trams, and other accommodations -- and that San Diego should try to coordinate with other Southern California airport groups to make sure they worked in a coordinated manner.

Kehoe, meanwhile, declined to give any specifics about what her looming "reform" legislation might look like.

But she did say she was still interested in the idea of stripping the authority's land-use powers, and giving them, perhaps, to the association of governments.

"That's what we're exploring," she said. "It may be that. Or maybe there's ways to strengthen the (authority's) public accountability, require taxpayer oversight, and integrate it with local jurisdictions and the military."

-- Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.

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