The Georgia House of Representatives is considering legislation—S.B. 131 authored by Sen. Burt Jones—that passed the Senate and which creates a state authority to oversee Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. It would remove control over airport operations, especially its historically corrupt contracting/vendor system, from Atlanta’s mayor.
The Jones strategy now is to tie the airport authority bill to a bill granting Delta Air Lines a fuel tax exemption. Insiders say that the next step is for Jones to meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and House Speaker David Ralston to pursue a “win-win” by passing both the state authority and the fuel taxation exemption. Authority proponents are asking this question: Why would the governor and House speaker want to stand in the way of cleaning up airport corruption? After all, they argue, airport bid-rigging, vendor bribery and airport jobs for unqualified mayoral cronies span over 40 years—and this mess affects the entire image of the state.
Various lawmakers (including Jones) have opposed tax breaks like the one for Delta, but support the state airport authority. So the Jones strategy appears fairly straightforward: Secure a Kemp-Ralston agreement to get legislators to consider the authority/tax exemption legislation in a House-Senate conference committee. In that committee, the goal would be for GOP negotiators to fashion a compromise (agreed to by Jones, Kemp and Ralston) getting both measures passed in a package deal.
Into this debate comes Emmy Award-winning journalist-turned-consumer investigator Dale Cardwell. He has already testified to a Senate committee probing airport corruption and yesterday announced that he filed open records requests in October 2018 to study what companies are awarded contracts and get payment through Atlanta’s Equal Business Opportunity program. “City officials tout its EBO as one of the country’s model minority and female-owned business creation platforms,” he notes, “and one of the key reasons the city should maintain control of Hartsfield-Jackson International.” Cardwell and his team report “the city does not prepare reports for the Council, Mayor or the general public that provide an easy roadmap to see what companies get paid and how the money is distributed.” The press release continues:
“Cardwell’s review detailed in this video shows that in fiscal year 2016- 2017, 3,794 companies were pre-qualified to compete for contracts with the city. 304 EBO companies received some level of payment, or only 8.1%. Cardwell’s review also found 70% of the dollars paid through the program ($125,803,722.15) went to just 43 companies or 1.1% of companies certified to compete for a contract. Furthermore, the city does not create or does not produce reports for the public showing whether the EBO program is fostering growth for individual companies year to year. We invite Georgians to examine these numbers to determine how the city is performing.”
The Cardwell report and supporting documentation, which he hopes will especially be studied by the governor and House speaker, can be found at airportcorruption.com
