The UPoR has an article out about the city’s latest move in the ongoing debate over control of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The core issue:
Sloppy bookkeeping and misfiled federal reports stretch back decades at Charlotte Douglas International Airport and need to be corrected, Charlotte City Manager Ron Carlee said Monday.
But former Charlotte Aviation Director Jerry Orr and his attorney, former Charlotte mayor Richard Vinroot, dismissed the issues raised by Carlee. Vinroot called them “irrelevant” and a “sideshow” to the city’s campaign to fight off a new, independent commission the legislature created this year to run Charlotte Douglas.
OK, I just don’t see how this advances the city’s cause. So CLT was mismanaged for many years by Jerry Orr. It was ultimately the city’s responsibility to catch such mistakes but the city didn’t. So why should we trust that the city will do a better job in the future? The city though doesn’t seem willing to take their argument to the next level, that a regional authority created specifically to keep Orr running the airport is incapable of providing meaningful oversight over Orr, and keep such mistakes from happening in the future.
