(May 6, 2003) -- On May 2, LB City Hall held a press briefing in response to a significant FAA letter regarding LB Airport. On May 3, the Press-Telegram chose not to quote even one sentence from the FAA letter, preferring to repeat bright spots spoon fed by City Hall.

LBReport.com reported the bright spots...and potentially malignant ones. We quoted the FAA letter (what a concept). We posted it, unfiltered, on this web site.

LBReport.com readers know what happened. The FAA let a settlement agreement go into effect hammered out by LB's legal team with three LB Airport carriers. The parties conditioned it on FAA approval. The agreement resolved a dispute with those three carriers over flight slots and avoided court litigation. Good.

But instead of protecting LB's Airport Noise Compatibility Ordinance -- which City Hall told the public only 90 days ago was a key goal -- the FAA letter gratuitously targeted the ordinance's daily flight limits with a load of bureaucratic bullying.

This is outrageous agency conduct...and merits a serious response -- from LB and Capitol Hill.

This is a matter of principle, not NIMBY'ism. It's proper to prevent an expansionist bureaucracy from trying to overturn what a federal Court of Appeals panel has upheld. It's the right thing to do in the interest of taxpayers and the public.

LB's Airport Noise Compatibility Ordinance is one of the nation's most progressive. Its real-world noise budgets keep LB at the cutting edge, increasing flights as technology reduces noise. The flight increases are technologically embedded at the core of the substantive sections approved by the federal Court of Appeals. (The appellate justices ruled an unrelated section defective, which is corrected in LB's current ordinance.)

It's an affront to that federal Appellate Court and to Congress for FAA bureaucrats to foment a self-inflated expansion of their own empire. One way to handle this (there may be others) is to add a sentence to this year's Appropriations legislation, preventing FAA from expending federal resources to conduct an Inquisition into the ordinance. That wouldn't hinder anything else FAA does, but would prevent a waste of scarce taxpayer resources.

We propose this with regret. We suspect there are two FAA's. One displayed heroic intelligence under pressure when it shut down air traffic entirely on 9-11-01 and saved countless lives. The other FAA, a vestige of the past, coddled corporate aviation interests, enabled insecure security and helped make 9-11 possible. The old FAA's mindlessness pervades the bullying in its letter to LB. It is the limited target of our ire now.

We do not want to see the title of this editorial, FAA v. LB, on some government proceeding. That is what the FAA letter threatens. That is what a sentence or two from Congress is needed to prevent.

Those who advise doing nothing are disproved by what LB officials said barely 90 days ago. They explained why a major city goal was to secure the FAA's blessing for our Airport Noise Ordinance. That is the opposite of what happened. City Hall cannot have it both ways: calling something significant, then pretending it doesn't matter.

On May 6, a PT editorial called the FAA action "indeed a victory in a larger battle for local control of the airport," adding "the FAA's ruling didn't offer a strong validation of the ordinance, but seemed reluctant to tamper with it." And further, "The FAA's decision does not render the ordinance immune to future legal challenges. Those could still come at any time (although the FAA's endorsement should at least give the city more ammunition in court)."

In our view, this isn't quite "Baghdad Bob" level stuff...but it's still laughable.

Yes, the city's legal team achieved a positive and important result. Yes, they demonstrated to the FAA why a settlement hammered out with three competing carriers that avoided court litigation should take effect. (The agency's gratuitous bullying elsewhere in its letter shows us how difficult that accomplishment likely was.)

Ín our opinion, the responsibility for what has happened undenibaly rests with the City Council and those who applauded its reckless, notorious May, 2001 vote (8-1, details below) that changed city law and led to JetBlue taking all 27 of LB's then-vacant large aircraft flight slots.

That Council action was not required by the FAA or by any federal court. It tempted the FAA to put its nose in our tent.

Councilmembers Bonnie Lowenthal, Dan Baker, Frank Colonna, Jackie Kell, Laura Richardson, Ray Grabinski, Rob Webb and Jerry Shultz voted yes. Councilman Dennis Carroll -- who supported a six month 30 flight moratorium when seeking votes in 2000 but took no visible Council action to deliver it -- couldn't even get a substitute motion passed that would delay action for two weeks. Webb and Grabinski voted with Carroll for the substitute, but when it lost Webb and Grabinski switched sides.

That Council vote displayed LB's famed "mushroom treatment" in full bloom. The public wasn't told about a fermenting JetBlue plan to take all then-vacant large aircraft flight slots. The public wasn't told that the Council vote could max out our flight slots, make it more likely some carrier would ask for one more and put at risk the Airport ordinance that Councilmembers repeatedly profess to be protecting.

The Councilmembers who did that in the dark have a duty to support a modest Capitol Hill remedy now.

"Baghdad Bob" looked ridiculous, and the regime he served ultimately collapsed as residents previously kept in the dark learned undeniable facts.

In April 2003, LBReport.com recorded over 30,000 page views. A year ago, we had just over 15,000.