by Jon Styf
The Tennessee Senate approved a bill to give the state the majority of power appointing board members for the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on Thursday.
The airport authority currently has seven members, all appointed by Nashville’s mayor and approved by the Metro Nashville council. If signed into law, Senate Bill 1326 would make it an eight-member board with two appointees each for the mayor, governor, House speaker and Senate speaker.
In discussing the new appointing structure, Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, argued that the shift of appointment authority would make the airport authority a state entity.
“That means that the airport of Davidson County needs to move from the county books to the state books,” Yarbro said. “Once it becomes a component unit of state government, there’s a different set of rules that apply. State entities are not allowed to take out debt and loans to cover operations in the same way that local government units are.”
But Sen. Paul Bailey, R-Sparta, argued the only thing that would change would be who appoints the airport board members.
“This legislation does not propose to create a new legal entity,” Bailey said. “The legislation just changes the appointments and therefore there is no transfer of ownership. There is no liability back to the state relative to the debt.”
Yarbro, who is running for Nashville mayor, then argued that the airport is currently well managed and the board change would put financial and management risk into the airport. Kirk Schaffer, former associate administrator for airports for the Federal Aviation Administration, testified in committee the change could also create issues for the airport in terms of FAA funding grants if a legal battle occurred between the city and state.
“This is reckless,” Yarbro said. “It’s like getting in a fight with your wife and burning down the garage. It doesn’t help anyone.”
The House version of the bill, HB 1176, is set to be discussed in the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.
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Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter of The Center Square who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies.
Photo “Jeff Yarbro” by Sen. Jeff Yarbro. Background Photo “Nashville International Airport” by Nashville International Airport.
