JACKSON — The board of Jackson’s city-run airport says it will go as far as necessary to fight a bill that would give suburbs and the state some control over the airport.
If the Senate passes the bill, it goes to Gov. Phil Bryant. The current board of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport and its supporters said the fight won’t stop there.
The Mississippi NAACP, Hinds County representatives and Jackson community leaders joined the board Wednesday in the state Capitol to oppose the bill. The group, supported by Democratic legislators, said the bill is a financially motivated power grab for an enterprise that the majority-black city has run for decades.
Republican supporters of the bill said the airport should have a regional board to better represent the customer base it serves and bring more development to the area.
The bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Harkins of predominantly white Flowood, would replace a five-member board with a nine-member Jackson Metropolitan Airport Authority. The airport sits near Harkins’ district in suburban Rankin County, but it is on land that has been part of the city of Jackson for decades.
Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber currently names all five board members; the bill would allow him and the Jackson City Council to name one member each. The governor would pick two board members, and suburban Rankin and Madison Counties would each name one.
Also getting one appointment each would be the lieutenant governor, the executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority and the adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard. A House change to the original bill would require the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s appointees to be from Jackson.
Regina May, an attorney representing the board, said officials will “seek all legal redress” if the bill becomes law. She said the board hired former State Supreme Court Justice Fred Banks and has also been in touch with the Federal Aviation Administration. The federal agency would have to approve the change, under the bill.
The bill amounts to a state takeover of the city’s profitable asset, said Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes, D-Gulfport, leader of the Legislative Black Caucus. She said the airport is financially solvent and well managed, despite what supporters of the bill say.
“They’re running a lean, clean enterprise,” Williams-Barnes said.
Todd Allen, a white Jackson resident and member of a local cooperative business group, said the bill effectively says the African-American-run airport needs white control. Allen is the advocacy coordinator of ACLU Mississippi but said he was speaking as a resident and not on behalf of the organization.
“A more blatant form of racism hangs people from a tree,” Allen said. “A more sinister form puts a rope around your neck to remind you who’s in control.”
The airport and the land it sits on have a net worth of about $127 million, which will increase with time, said the Rev. James Henley, vice chairman of the airport board.
“This is about ownership,” he said. “The bottom line is that these assets belong to the city of Jackson.”
Henley said Harkins, a real-estate broker, stands to profit from the bill by representing private entities hoping to buy or sell land adjacent to the airport.
Harkins said the allegation is “ridiculous.” He said he has sold land in the area before but that he gets no direct financial benefit from it, though he does get a commission for doing so.
“I live there and it’s my line of work,” Harkins said. “What happens at the airport has nothing to do with that.”
He said a House change to the bill to have the Legislature approve any sale or purchases of airport land further removes him from the process. He said he supports that change and the requirement that a majority of the board members live in Jackson.
“They still have majority control,” Harkins said. “And we’re not taking away any land or any revenue they get from the airport. At the end of the day Jackson loses nothing.”
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