Reckless "Feasibility" Of Risking Uncontrollable Outcome At LB Airport

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Editorial

Reckless "Feasibility" At LB Airport

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(April 20, 2016, 10:15 a.m.) -- Tonight (April 20), a LB Airport-hired consultant will allow audible audience questions at an Airport organized meeting to discuss a "Feasibility Study" directed by a City Council-majority (6-3, Austin, Uranga and Supernaw dissenting) supposedly to inform itself before deciding whether to allow a federal inspection (customs) facility that would enable international cargo and passenger operations. Fielding the audience questions publicly is a change after the public rebelled at the first of two meetings on March 30 and refused to be herded to individual "stations" to ask questions.

"The format will allow for questions and answers from the public, similar to the one that Airport adjusted to at the last meeting. The consultant will also allow for some time toward the end to available for individual questions from attendees," an Airport spokesperson told us.

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The April 20 meeting is from 6-8 p.m. at the LB Gas and Oil Auditorium, 2400 S. Spring St. but to be clear: the Airport-hired consultant isn't responsible for doing what six Councilmembers (Mungo, Price, Gonzalez, Lowenthal, Andrews and Richardson) voted to direct and three Councilmembers (Austin, Uranga and Supernaw) voted against but since then have done nothing audible or visible to stop.

A federal inspection (customs) facility can't be limited to one operator. It would invite an entirely new category of users -- international cargo and passenger operators -- to seek LB Airport flight slots already filled under LB's protective Airport ordinance. This could arguably incentivize a potentially fatal challenge to the City's Airport ordinance, considered a major City asset, since it protects Long Beach from unlimited numbers of flights at all hours on all runways.

Although Council incumbents predictably say they prioritize protecting the City's Airport ordinance, the "Feasibility Study" won't discuss serious risks to the ordinance. The Council is leaving that to the City Attorney's office AFTER the consultant completes its $300,000+ "Feasibility Study."

Does that sound credible or responsible to you? Would YOU spend $300,000+ to study whether an action is "feasible" BEFORE FIRST determining if the action could result in the permanent loss of what you claim is most important? The very idea is absurd, preposterous, self-collapsing.

Tonight's "public meeting" is a sop added by its July 2015 motion-maker, 5th dist. Councilwoman Stacy Mungo, to make it sound like the public will be heard when the truth is the opposite; like the March 30 meeting, the public tonight will still be treated basically as serfs to be told what their masters plan to do whether they like it or not...and if the serfs have questions, the masters will answer them.

In our opinion, the City Attorney's office should have sounded the alarm on the risks long ago. We speculate that the City Attorney may not be able to do so in a fully candid manner, since as the City's legal representative the office may not want to publicly acknowledge the magnitude of the risks the City could face in unpredictable litigation.

In our view, the risks are obvious and self-evident. They have been clearly stated publicly by former Airport Advisory Commissioner Doug Haubert (an experienced lawyer now LB's City Prosecutor) who publicly described those risks in 2015 testimony to LB's Airport Advisory Commission (not reported to date by ANY Long Beach news outlet except LBREPORT.com; for our coverage, click here.)

Internal Airport documents obtained in 2014 by LBREPORT.com using state freedom of information law show that former Airport management expended significant time and resources in much of 2013 to explore allowing international flights at the behest of Airport tenant JetBlue. Airport management did this with zero public transparency and with no voted Council authority or Municipal Code authority we can find. The Airport's actions included commissioning TWO internal reports in 2013 addressing feasibility issues, both basically focusing on costs or Airport economics, NOT on risks to the Airport ordinance. (For LBREPORT.com coverage, click here.)

For the record, Airport management told Councilmembers what it was doing in summary memos in August and November 2013 but not one then-Councilmember -- including Al Austin, Suja Lowenthal, Dee Andrews and (now Mayor) Robert Garcia -- disclosed this to the public entering the 2014 election cycle. Their silence effectively kept the Airport developments from becoming an issue as the public elected a new Mayor and Council majority. JetBlue waited until after the 2014 elections, then in early 2015 publicly asked the City to request a federal inspection facility. The company has publicly indicated it plans to operate under the terms of the Airport ordinance (but it obviously can't control the actions of others.)

To our knowledge, allowing a federal customs facility and international operations at LB Airport is a purely discretionary action. To our knowledge, the Long Beach City Council doesn't have to change our Airport and risk permanently damaging our city to suit the desires of an Airport tenant...which knew LB Airport was an exclusively domestic airport when it came here.

LB Airport is a convenience and fine as it is, but the definition of malignancy is when a healthy cell begins to exhibit uncontrolled growth. In our opinion, six Long Beach Council incumbents are recklessly inviting that self-damaging diagnosis (the latest in decades of Council self-inflicted wounds) as long as they consider the Airport risk "feasible" and three incumbents who seemed to grasp the magnitude of the risk now simply shrug.

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