"San Diego airport authority has outlived its purpose"

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Airport authority has outlived its purpose
By JIM TRAGESER
The San Diego (CA) North County Times


State Sen. Christine Kehoe has gone only about half as far as she should.

The San Diego Democrat has introduced a bill in the state Legislature to
take away the land-planning authority from the San Diego County Regional
Airport Authority. If passed and signed by the governor, starting in January
2008 the San Diego Association of Governments will resume its previous
function of planning future use around the area's 16 local airports and
airfields.

That's all for the best, but Kehoe should take her efforts to their logical
conclusion and get the state to do away with the airport authority
completely.
 
The airport authority was created by the state to only investigate whether
San Diego needs a new airport -- and if so, where.

But the authority completely skipped step 1 and proceeded immediately to
step 2. Even there, the authority had clearly decided on Miramar Marine
Corps Air Station before it ever began its charade of an "investigation"
into where Lindbergh should be moved.

Now that the voters have overwhelmingly rejected that pitch, the entire
raison d'etre for the authority is gone.

So why keep it around?

The airport authority simply can't be trusted to abide by the public's say
on this matter. For whatever reasons, the members of the authority have
consistently behaved as if the state had chartered the body to convince the
public that we need a civilian airport at Miramar.

The more fundamental question of whether the region even needs or wants a
larger, international airport was never asked of area residents. The
authority's staff and appointed leaders instead operated from a presumption
that a new airport was an unquestioned -- and unquestionable -- good.

But in bypassing the issue of whether a new airport was truly needed, the
airport authority betrayed its charter from the state. And the authority was
positively Rumsfeldian in its resolute insistence that only the Miramar site
could serve as a new airport.

Concerns of how a civilian airport at Miramar would impact traffic, the
economy and the environment (not to mention trifling concerns such as, say,
national defense) were all given short shrift by the authority.

So now we have a governmental body that has consistently refused to abide by
the terms of its creation, that denied the public it supposedly served a
true voice in the process until the final vote, and whose supporters have
said that they will continue to push for Miramar despite the results of the
public's vote.

Why on earth keep such a cancer around?

Excise it, Sen. Kehoe.

The San Diego Unified Port District ran Lindbergh Field quite well for many
years. If SANDAG can manage land-use issues around the county's air
facilities (and it can), surely the port can resume its former
responsibility of running Lindbergh.

That would not only save us voters/taxpayers money by eliminating a
duplicative agency, but it would also give Lindbergh Field an operator that
is actually committed to seeing that it is run successfully.

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