"Bill would strip San Diego airport board of land-use authority"

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Bill would strip airport board of land-use authority 
By DAVE DOWNEY
The San Diego (CA) North County Times


The agency that operates Lindbergh Field may not be in the airport land-use
planning business much longer.

Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, introduced a bill Monday that would strip
the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board of its legislative
authority to write land-use plans, or blueprints for development in and
around airports, for 16 area air hubs. 

If approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor next year, the
scaling back of the airport board's responsibilities would take effect in
January 2008.
 
The development came just as the board, acting as the regional Airport Land
Use Commission, adopted new plans Monday for six small county-owned
airports, including those in Fallbrook, Ramona and Borrego Springs.

The plans restrict development in the immediate vicinity of the airports, in
order to head off potential community conflicts over noise and reduce the
chance that planes will crash into homes and schools.

Kehoe said the new legislation, Senate Bill 10, would shift responsibility
for airport land-use planning back to the San Diego Association of
Governments, a regional transportation and planning agency. The association
handled that responsibility before the airport authority's debut in 2003.

"That's all that's in the bill at this point," Kehoe said. "We're working on
additional language that should be finalized by the end of this month and
put into the bill in January."

Kehoe said she was considering options from eliminating the $158,000-a-year
salaries for the three executive members of the airport board to forming an
independent taxpayer watchdog group to oversee airport authority operations.
Six of the board positions are part-time and are not on the payroll.

The senator has said she also was considering restructuring the airport
authority or eliminating it and giving Lindbergh Field to another agency,
such as the association, to manage.

"There are several different structures that we are studying, and we want to
get the one that is the most successful and the one that is the most
accountable to San Diegans," Kehoe said.

In another development, board member Paul Peterson, a La Jolla land-use
attorney, resigned his post effective Jan. 15. In his resignation letter,
Peterson said that he needed "to be free to spend more time with my family."

The development sets the stage for as many as six board positions to change
hands by the first of the year.

The airport authority was created by passage of a state law in 2001 that
sought to lay to rest the regional debate over whether San Diego County
should plan to retire Lindbergh Field and build a new airport.

The authority was called on to find a location for a new airport if
necessary.

More than three years of debate and study led to last summer's naming of
Miramar Marine Corps Air Station as the board's preferred site for a new
airport and culminated in last month's overwhelming rejection of Miramar at
the ballot box.

In the aftermath of the defeat, there has been much talk of restructuring
the airport authority and possibly retiring it.

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