Thursday, Oct, 19, 2006 | This San Diego County Regional Airport Authority (SDCRAA) needs to be disbanded. They appear to have taken a self directed path when their tasks were clearly defined for them at the very beginning and all done at the expense of taxpayers.
The state mandated the airport authority must submit a site recommendation for a future regional airport as a ballot proposition for a countywide vote by Nov. 7, 2006. Instead of that clear cut site, we find terminology of desired dialog. The state didn’t mandate the airport authority to ask voters to decide if one of those national security locations should have assets negotiated away by a group other than the Base Realignment and Closure Committee? The airport authority’s legal counsel concluded that, because there was no specific project, the authority could not be bound by a public vote.
The SDCRAA over stepped its bounds with the Proposition A language. It’s the role of the Base Realignment and Closure Committee to enter into discussions to diminish or enhance a military base. National experts, with the resources to determine national security needs, have provided a military site at Miramar for years. Determining strategic locations and military assets needed for national security is not something that I would entrust to the SDCRAA. Studies to evaluate potential national enemies, their threats and capabilities have not been done by the SDCRAA nor were they created to do that. The SDCRAA does not have the necessary intelligent services that could provide this worldwide information to them, nor do they have the security clearance to see it. Without first conducting those studies, the airport authority could not reach an informed conclusion identifying needed or unnecessary military locations, assets, size, manpower, role and equipment needed at each facility.
An airport authority made up of individuals representing each airport in San Diego County would better serve addressing our air travel needs. Each airport representation would bring intimate familiarity with their airport’s assets, capabilities, unused capacity, attainable future expansion and surrounding land uses. Regional aviation needs can easily be dispersed throughout the region without ever targeting military assets.