EDITORIAL: Flying Too High at Metro Airport

By Detroit Free Press

Dec. 5–In this day of tight finances, especially around here, what entity, public or private, has not put tight controls on expense spending, including travel and “working lunches” with colleagues who happen to work on the premises?

That would be Detroit Metro Airport, where officials ran up more than $300,000 in expenses in just under two years for restaurants, limos, drinks and fancy hotels — and where chief executive Lester Robinson said only after the Free Press began asking questions about the spending that he is drafting a “more formal review and approval process.” The story, published Tuesday, can be read at freep.com/airportexec.

Should not such a process have been in place to raise questions about Jack Vogel, senior vice president of business development for the Wayne County Airport Authority, his assistant and another airport official running through about $1,000 for meals and cabs while in Paris “adjusting to the time difference” between Detroit and their final destination, Dubai? That’s nearly $100 per hour of adjustment.

Where has the Wayne County Airport Authority been while these bills were rolling in? The authority was created in 2002 in part to get a handle on all the money flowing through Metro and neighboring Willow Run Airport. Some watchdogs for the public its members have been. These kinds of shenanigans are the last thing airport officials need as they eye public support for necessary Metro expansions. Does this make anyone feel good about the idea of more revenue bonds, or higher “passenger facility charges” on airline tickets to finance airport improvements?

Even if you could justify this kind of high-rolling, which you can’t, it’s the wrong thing to be doing in Michigan, where the economy is now as bad as the weather and people all over the state are thankful just to be working, where a couple is lucky to have enough scratch for a decent anniversary dinner, but where airport officials saw nothing wrong with $400 hotel rooms or thousand-dollar dinners for their own staff on Mackinac Island, all with money from Metro travelers.

The truth is that at a time when everything is supposed to be changing so Detroit and Michigan can break from their past and move into a brighter economic future, this kind of stuff still goes on way too often. There are still too many public officials who see their place at the table of authority as a trough rather than a privilege. Too often there are no rules, other than grab it while you can, and no accountability, other than to themselves.

If airport chief Robinson can’t do better, can’t devise a structure that respects the money and responsibility that come with leading one of this region’s most important economic drivers, the airport authority board ought to find someone who can.

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