Highway Robbery at LAX : Airport: The reduction of already low landing fees is the last straw; the people, not the airlines, should dictate policy.

When a business finds itself flush with profits, it reinvests some and spreads the rest among its investors. It’s hard to imagine such an enterprise deciding instead to use up its profit by dropping what it charges its customers by 20%. Yet that’s what the Los Angeles International Airport Board of Commissioners has done.

Even as the city staggers under debt and must cut vital services for lack of funds, the airport has been running up a surplus, but, thanks to an antiquated City Charter rule, the money can’t be transferred to any other city entity. The airport commission’s solution, incredible as it sounds, is to eliminate the surplus by giving it to the airlines in the form of reduced landing fees.

This is just the most recent evidence that the people of Los Angeles, the taxpayer “investors,” don’t control their airport or enjoy dividends from its success; the airline industry does. If you need more proof, consider the following:

-- When the board cut the landing fees, they were already the lowest of any major airport in the nation: 62 cents per 1,000 pounds, compared with an average of $2.60 at the airports that serve the New York City area. The new fee at LAX is 48 cents.

-- Ten years ago, the city planned to limit LAX to 40 million passengers annually. Growth beyond this number was to be handled by construction of new facilities at the city-owned Palmdale Regional Airport. But the airlines are opposed to using Palmdale and the plan has been ignored. Meanwhile, the passenger count at LAX topped 46 million last year, and the airport commission wants to handle 65 million by the end of the decade. Palmdale isn’t even mentioned anymore.

-- Airport management, board members, even the mayor regularly travel all over the world rubbing elbows with airline representatives on “trade missions” that are really junkets paid for out of airport funds. For their part, the airlines lobby the commission to keep LAX the cheapest place to land in the country. The airline industry even helped to screen applicants for the airport’s position of assistant general manager for community relations; the community did not.

I am committed to putting a stop to this flying gravy train. The airlines must pay their fair share. Taxpayers must get a fair return from their airport. Control of LAX must be taken away from the airline industry and handed over to the people.

And we can do it if charter amendments and other measures I have introduced are approved. The ballot measures I have proposed would remove the City Charter’s restrictions against transfer of airport money to city coffers. I also am proposing a special fund that would direct these monies to paramedics, police and fire-fighting, where they are desperately needed.

Revenue-producing city enterprises should be run like any well-run business. This means prudent fiscal management of LAX for the benefit of the city, not the airline holding companies. Landing fees should be based on the market, not on the airlines’ desire for a subsidy. If our fees were today at the national average, still far lower than New York’s, we would have enough revenue to eliminate more than half of the cuts that were made in city services in order to balance our budget.

I have also proposed strict construction limits at the airport until the LAX master plan is approved. Any airport growth must be shifted to Palmdale, the region’s fastest-growing area.

The Bush Administration, which along with its predecessor has brought us a $4-trillion national debt, prescribes selling the airport to solve our problems. LAX is one of the city’s most valuable assets. We don’t have to sell it; we just have to run it for its stockholders and ensure that it remains a secure source of revenue for the city far into the future.

There are not many sure things these days, but airport revenues are about as sure as you can get. Travel and commerce in and out of Los Angeles keeps growing. No one is going to open a competing airport next door to LAX. The value of the property will continue to increase. No, this is not an asset that should be sold. It is an asset that can and should be managed responsibly to serve the public.