by Bill Sell

Proposed Airport District Legislation

Senator Jeff Plale’s proposed legislation to privatize General Mitchell International Airport (GMIA) has raised eyebrows.

The airport is well managed by Milwaukee County. There have been no reports of poor management—on the contrary, airport director C. Barry Bateman is given high marks for managing this largest airport in the state, without using property tax money to do so.

Why should this change? Why privatize our airport? The Airport District bill solves no problem, and cuts out the public by putting the power of eminent domain in the hands of a seven person management politically insulated from the public.

Thankfully the Milwaukee County Board and the Mayor’s office are resisting this misguided proposal. The County Executive, however, is supportive of the change, which increases his personal power over the airport. Scott Walker’s appointive power under this law would grace his campaign for governor at a time when he is spending money to explain to out-state Wisconsin who he is.

What The Airport District Bill Does

Plale’s bill defines Wisconsin’s public airports into two new categories:

(a) large (only GMIA!)—”in excess of 2 million scheduled passenger enplanements” per year [229.861 (1) (a)]; and

(b) all the other airports [229.861 (1) (b)].

GMIA has about 3.5 million passenger enplanements per year; Dane County about 1 million. (“Enplanements” are passengers departing.)

The bill takes Mitchell Field but allows all other airport managements to sell their airports.

Taking the Airport

The bill takes the assets of Mitchell Field away from Milwaukee County “without financial consideration other than the assumption of liabilities and obligations.” [229.865 (1) (a) emphasis added] There is no provision in this bill for Milwaukee County consent.

Eminent Domain

This bill also gives the district board eminent domain, which means it could force neighbors of the airport to sell their homes or businesses in order to grow the airport.

This is not an elected County Board or Common Council taking your home for a freeway or a runway, it’s seven politically well connected business persons, politicians, or bureaucrats who owe you, the public, not even a press conference to explain their actions.

Selling an Airport for Cash

While taking Mitchell Field from the County, the bill allows all other counties or municipalities to sell their airports. The transfer of jurisdiction “may take the form of a sale, lease, or other conveyance and may be with or without financial consideration.” [229.865 (2) emphasis added]

Authority

GMIA assets would be turned over free of charge to an unelected district board. The bill requires no consent of the Milwaukee County Board. The drafting of the bill was, apparently, a surprise to local officials.

For out-state airports this bill is an opportunity for cash. This cash-out opportunity is tactical, lining up other airport managements in favor a bill to wrest control of GMIA—a kind of legislative mobbing, or ganging up. Anti-Milwaukee strategy is not new, either, but when Senator Plale—who represents a hunk of Milwaukee—rides currents of anti-Milwaukee fever (as he has at other times, too), a Milwaukee voter must wonder what—or whether—is he thinking?

Appointments to the Airport District Board

Four members of the Mitchell Airport District management board are to be named by the governor; three by Milwaukee’s county executive.

The governor’s appointments may be from any of the seven counties which are part of the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) jurisdiction (Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha, Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, Milwaukee).

Why, look at this: No Milwaukee County residency requirement for any appointee appears in the bill. [229.861] Sure, this makes the sponsors look careless, but omitting something obvious is an effective tactic. Here’s how:

Faking a Problem

To get a bill passed for your friendly private interests (campaign funders) you “omit” the obvious, something so blatant that even our sleepy media will be stirred to writing a major headline before dozing off again. Then “under pressure” the committee “listens” and amends that section and announces: “Milwaukee will have a resident on the Airport District board.”

Bored with the process, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will jump into the discussion and announce that “objections to the bill have now been answered.” And then turn to their usual entertainments. (By the way, The Journal Sentinel has it wrong in its editorial of December 23, 2005, in declaring that “At least two members would have to live in the suburbs near the airport.” Not so.)

There are aspects of this bill that the proposers will not want fixed. The obvious foolishness—no Milwaukee resident—is a distraction. If you’ve ever been bumped and taken by a pickpocket, you think for the time being the bump was serious. Later when the wallet’s gone you know that the bump served the thief’s purpose but it was only a distraction. Consider the “omission” of a residency requirement the intentional “bump” but hang on to your wallet.

The issues of authority, eminent domain and responsibility to the public make this bill a failure by any intelligent standard of good government. And for those reasons this bill should fail.

If the bill does not fail, what if the Airport District itself fails?

Airport District Failure

There is no provision in the bill to assess the dollar value of Mitchell Field and to create a fund to isolate it from malfeasance by the district board. While the track record of privatization has been dismal, there is no risk assessment in this bill. And the newly created district board is given no parameters for conducting their business—not even a basic parameter such as growth targets. But by not covering failure, these “pro business” legislatures are prancing about like virgins in the world of piracy.

Citizens are smarter than that. Memories of the County Museum transfer with reports of bad management, corruption, or embezzlement are fresh.

Let’ say, gosh, the new airport district fails—the bill allows the unelected Mitchell Airport district board to dissolve itself and give the airport to any public body that will accept it. Yes, Who?

Bailing Out of the Impending Crash

Which governing body would step forward to cover the losses? A bond issue floated by the Airport District board to extend a runway could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars—the kind of foolishness that an elected Milwaukee County Board may be inclined to protect us from.

With only $52 million in break-even annual revenues, the airport is hardly in a position to borrow the kind of sums required for runway or terminal expansions.

How can it make changes without taxing or borrowing authority? Of course it cannot. It will get what it needs to “succeed.”

In practical terms, Milwaukee County home owners would find itself again in charge of the airport, and all of the debts, contracts, liabilities. Property taxes would pay for the crash.

Selling all of our parks might not cover a financial disaster at Mitchell Field.

Questions Anyone?

Let’s ask.

Who are the private interests promoting this bill?

Will these interests be brought to a hearing in Madison? Will they divulge their private marketing plans to build and exploit the airport? Where will the airport garner the resources to help develop a high speed rail between O’Hare and Mitchell?

If the Airport District fails, will this failure—and the rise in property taxes—hurt Milwaukee’s quality of life? To mention a few: shifting money to freeway expansion away from transit services, and larding downtown with ever more parking lots?

Why, in a word, is privatization always offered as a pig in a poke? Why can’t we get details of the plan? Is there a plan? Or is it the hope that springs out of faith in free markets?

Privatization

Privatization means making a public asset private—taking property from the government; sometimes, like Mitchell Field, the property would be taken. Sometimes it is sold. The Pabst Theater was sold to Michael Cudahy for one dollar. To many, this transaction made some sense because the property was costing the City of Milwaukee nearly $200,000 a year that it was not recovering by managing the theater.

Milwaukee County, too, has privatized assets. Morning brought the upset stomach and the collective vomiting but a sour taste has lingered over the failures of the County Museum, and the County’s Whitnall Park Boerner Botanical Gardens. We could lose both those jewels, while private interests have skated away with cash and assets. These errors were errors of judgment in our own County government; but when the people stood firm, as against the give-away of Lincoln Park, our public interests prevailed and Lincoln Park remained public.

Does the Privatization of our Airport have a Purpose?

If any proposal from Madison would improve the economic engine of southeastern Wisconsin, then it should draw our sympathetic attention. But Supervisor James White, chairman of the Milwaukee County Board’s Transportation, Public Works and Transit Committee questioned how the change would benefit the airport, adding: “There has to be something more than, ‘The private sector wants it in a more privatized context.’ That’s not good enough.” [http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec05/380198.asp]

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel touts the “Blueprint for Economic Prosperity” by the Milwaukee Association of Commerce. But if that document is part of airport regionalization, isn’t it time to take that puppy out for an airing in public? It is not available on the MMAC web site for public review. If privatization has a bad name and gives the average citizen the willies, blame it not on the public, but on the secret shenanigans that are protected by our legislators.

The proposed legislation corrects no problem, moves management further from the asset, and pits one part of the state against another.

Let’s hope that by now Wisconsin matured a bit since that despicable moment in Wisconsin politics when Governor Thompson said to our brothers and sisters in the north, “Stick it to Milwaukee” about divisive taxing for the Brewer’s baseball stadium. That rift can heal with intelligent legislation that serves the whole state, but Senator Plale’s Airport District offering suggests not. An odor lingers that Milwaukee is under the thumb of people who fear and loathe our city, except when we play Santa Claus and give it all away.

Citizen Action

Why the Airport District Bill Should Be Defeated.

• Airport District management is delegated to 7 political appointees.

• No elected officials supervise this board; in fact, the board protects elected officials from the dirty work of borrowing money and taking property.

• This board has the power of Eminent Domain—taking property from residents and businesses.

• There is no appeal from these takings; nor is it to be reviewed by elected officials.

• This legislation probably extends privatization further into the realm of political power than anything that we have so far seen in Wisconsin.

• The legislation provides no protection for the taxpayers from board mistakes.

• If the airport management fails the Milwaukee County taxpayers will probably be forced to take the airport back, with all of its debts.

• The “plan” for the growth of the airport is secret; it belongs to the private interests that are backing this move. This suggests that this bill is at odds with Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law.

• The core theory [“Blueprint for Economic Prosperity”] is the private property of the Milwaukee Association of Commerce and apparently not available to the public.

• This Airport District can be dissolved by a simple vote of the 7 members of the board.

• No representative from the City or County of Milwaukee is required to be on this board.

City County Officials Incensed At Mitchell International Power Grab

County Supervisors Testify In Madison Against Airport Proposal

Suggested Citizen Action

Contact your State Representatives.

In Southeastern Milwaukee County they are:

• Senator Jeff Plale

• Representative Jon Richards

• Representative Chris Sinicki

• Representative Mike Honadel

• Representative Jeff Stone

Contact the Milwaukee County Board

Comments from: [Mitchell Field] Airport Neighbors Association

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~airportneighbors/airport_authority.html

If you wanted to put together a recipe for potential corruption, you might want to start with the ingredients below. We found them in a cursory reading of the proposed legislation. In addition to adding yet another layer of government, and eventually adding another tax upon our citizens, we believe the Plale/Stone proposed legislation would provide for the establishment of an airport district that:

• Will establish its own set of ordinances and enforce them without the consent of any other governing body
• Will be able to establish zoning ordinances and will be able to impose fines and/or imprisonment
• No other political subdivision may enact or enforce a zoning ordinance within the district
• Will have the power of eminent domain
• Can expend public funds to subsidize a district
• It can enter into partnerships, joint ventures, common ownership, etc., with other persons to further its purposes
• Will have concurrent police powers, and can arrest – with or without a warrant – anyone within its jurisdiction that violates any rule made by the district

Also of concern are:

• It can enter into contracts or agreements to license, regulate, or limit the number of all forms of ground transportation providing services within its jurisdiction
• Jurisdiction for operation of an airport would be vested in an officer of the district, said officer could establish charges and fees;
• The district may (not “shall”) determine the number of commissioners. The commissioners shall be persons especially interested in aeronautics;
• All monies (federal, state, passenger facility charges, etc.) shall be deposited to the district and paid out only by the district;
• May receive public or private money;
• It may initiate any airport project, such projects would require only 10 days public notice, the state transportation secretary and the governor would have final approval;
• The district may acquire any lands required for projects; and can acquire lands by condemnation; such (excess) lands shall be conveyed, by the district, to the state without charge; the lands could then be declared excess and sold without restriction;
• It can acquire easements; grant concessions and can award and enter into contracts and agreements;
• It can float bonds and mortgage airport property to secure those bonds;
• Maintain and invest funds in any investment it considers appropriate;
• It can lobby lawmakers or ratemaking authorities such as the PCS [probably Public Service Commission] using its funds to do so;
• It can enter into partnerships, joint ventures, common ownership, etc., with other persons to further its purposes;
• Borrow money for grants loans or subsidies;
• Lease or transfer property and float bonds
• No taxation would occur for repayment of bonds issued by district (This is probably what Plale and Stone are referring to when they say no property taxes will be used by the district, but remember, the district has the ability to “expend public funds to subsidize a district”)