By: CJ Dablo
Staff Writer
The proposal to build a customs facility at Long Beach Airport has been killed again, this time at the Long Beach Airport Advisory Commission meeting on March 16.
Many thought the issue had been finished long ago. Two months earlier, the city council had already effectively nixed the plan for a federal-inspection services facility (FIS) at the local municipal airport when city leaders merely requested to receive and file a report on the proposal on Jan. 24. The move certainly disappointed supporters of JetBlue Airways, the company confirmed to have been the only airline that had requested the facility. A customs facility would have only been needed if the council agreed to transform the domestic airport into an international facility.
Long Beach’s Airport Advisory Commission had one more chance to revisit the controversial issue, and by failing to get a majority, the motion did not pass. Last Thursday, the commission discussed the possibility of asking the city council to reconsider their decision.
The vote was evenly split among the commissioners who were present for the discussion.
Commissioners Jeff Rowe, Roland Scott and Gerald Mineghino voted in favor of the motion.
Commissioners Jeffrey Anderson, Wayne Chaney Sr. and Harold Gosling voted against the motion.
Elizabeth Cruz was absent from the meeting. Chair Karen Sherman recused herself from the discussion. Former Vice Chair Glenn Ray had already resigned from the commission earlier this month.
Rowe requested to discuss the issue last month. In an interview with the Signal Tribune this week, he explained why he chose to revisit the issue.
“I thought that this was the most pivotal issue in front of the commission, in front of the City [with regard] to the airport since the decision to expand the terminal,” Rowe said.
During the meeting last week, the 9th-district resident told the commission that a few days before the council meeting on Jan. 24, he had contacted Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, who represents Rowe’s district. He said Richardson told him that he anticipated that the council would vote 6-3 in favor of the proposal. When the vote on Jan. 24 turned out to be 8-1 against the proposal, Rowe said he called Richardson’s office again.
“So, the next morning,” Rowe said, “I called, and Rex’s staff had been inundated with similarly worded emails, phone calls, saying that ‘if you vote for this, candidates will be found to run against you.'”
Rowe’s new request to revisit the issue raised the hackles of a number of residents who thought the council’s decision earlier this year had been final, but they continued to fight hard against those who favored the customs facility.
Laurie Smith, a resident of the 3rd District, said she had filed complaints against Sherman and Ray with both the Public-Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office and the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Her complaints against Sherman and Ray deal with a conflict of interest— they are both tied to the airport industry. In a statement last week, the FPPC declined to comment on the ongoing investigation Smith initiated.
Smith told the commission during their March 16 meeting that Sherman and Ray had previously participated in discussions surrounding the FIS. Smith said that continuing to discuss this topic at the commission meeting— even if Sherman and Ray weren’t present for the discussion— would likely prompt her to include their names on her official complaints.
“I encourage you not to move forward with it because I don’t want to waste my time putting your name on an additional addendum,” Smith told the commission, “and I’m sure you do not want to see your name listed as part of an ongoing investigation either.”
“I found that profoundly disturbing,” Rowe said in his interview, adding that he told a fellow commissioner that he perceived her statement as a threat to the advisory commission.
Rowe repeated to the Signal Tribune what he told the commission last week— that the proposal to allow JetBlue to have a customs facility would mean jobs for the next generation. He expressed his firm belief that an international airport would create a positive economic impact to the city.
“I just thought, economically,” Rowe concluded, “for the present and the future, I can’t just sit and let this one pass by.”
Other commissioners did not agree.
“I admire your tenacity in chasing this, but I think it’s misplaced,” one commissioner at last week’s meeting told Rowe, explaining that despite how each commissioner feels about the proposal for an inspection station, both the commissioners and the city councilmembers have an obligation to listen to the residents, who said they didn’t want the FIS.
“Bringing this back up after the decision was made,” he concluded, “I don’t think bears any credibility on this group. I don’t understand the drive to keep promoting this dead horse. And as far as democracy in action, that’s politics in action.”
Sherman later that night briefly addressed the investigation.
“And I want to say for the record,” Sherman stated at the meeting, “being one of those two people that [are] being ‘investigated,’ that there is nothing that Commissioner Ray or I have ever voted on that, in any way, justifies a conflict of interest.”
It may be another victory for both Long Beach Neighborhoods First and LB HUSH2, neighborhood-advocacy groups that had successfully organized to protest at every public meeting in which the customs facility was discussed. The Signal Tribune asked Joe Sopo, a leader with both of the groups, if the meeting had gotten too personal for the city leaders and commissioners who were pressured to vote against the idea of an international airport.
“I’m not sure it got personal in a bad way,” Sopo said. “I mean, it was the will of the people. And it was too bad that it had to go as far as it went,” he added, describing how six of the councilmembers had voted two years ago to explore the possibility of building the customs facility.
Within that time frame, the City hired a consultant to study the issue, and the company delivered an overall positive report on the advantages of creating a new international service of the airport. Over those two years, residents from Long Beach Neighborhoods First and LB HUSH2 protested at every public meeting.
“They really did push the neighborhoods to the edge on that one,” Sopo concluded, “and it didn’t need to go that far.”
Sherman declined to be interviewed for this story, however she did confirm that the commission’s next meeting will take place in May, and at that time, the commission does select a new chair and vice chair.
JetBlue also did not respond to repeated media requests for comment on this story.
