City Council Delays Vote on Airport Consultant

As airport officials took steps to shore up Los Angeles International Airport’s ailing budget Tuesday, the City Council postponed a vote on a $1.5-million contract for a firm with close ties to Mayor James K. Hahn.

Several City Council members balked at the potential expenditure to the public relations firm, Winner & Associates, at a time when the airport is taking extraordinary measures to plug a projected $127-million budget deficit. The council voted 11-1 to delay until Jan. 15 a decision on the contract extension for the Encino-based firm.

The company was initially hired three years ago to help explain to the public a proposed $12-billion expansion of LAX. But with the plan now dead, Hahn’s appointees on the Airport Commission voted to keep Chuck Winner’s firm on retainer. They said that a public relations company might be needed to explain any future plans that are drawn to improve the airport.

But that explanation was not enough to persuade several council members.

“There’s no reason to be hiring a firm to distribute public information about [the plan] if it doesn’t exist yet,” Councilwoman Ruth Galanter told her colleagues.

Councilwomen Cindy Miscikowski also expressed strong reservations.

“I have a lot of questions because, members of the council, in the last couple of months since Sept. 11, we have had our chambers filled with people whose jobs have been lost,” she said.

At the council meeting, the mayor’s office rejected suggestions that the contract extension was a payback for Winner’s political support of Hahn.

“There is no connection,” Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards told the council. “This contract is a contract that was engaged in under the previous administration.”

At Hahn’s request, Winner was host of three fund-raisers during the mayoral campaign. The public relations executive and his family members and associates also gave more than $20,000 to the campaign that made Hahn mayor in June.

The airport’s relationship with the public affairs firm began in December 1998, when the Airport Commission voted to award Winner a $3.2-million contract to promote former Mayor Richard Riordan’s controversial master plan. The commission eventually approved five amendments to the Winner contract, bringing the total contract to about $9 million.

Winner farmed out many of these duties to numerous subcontractors. Many of the firms that Winner has retained to work on the contract over the last three years are consultants who have run political campaigns for city officials, including:

* Lobbyist Leslie Song Winner and her company, Strategy Workshop. Leslie Winner, Chuck Winner’s former wife, worked pro bono for Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas when he formed a committee to study a run for Congress.

* Rick Taylor, who acted as a campaign consultant for Miscikowski’s reelection campaign and as a political strategist who helped elect Alex Padilla to the City Council in 1999.

* Steve Afriat, who worked as a paid consultant on former Councilwoman Laura Chick’s campaign for city controller.

Critics have said there’s little documentation regarding what services the airport received for its multimillion-dollar investment in the Winner contract. Councilman Jack Weiss agreed, complaining that he had been provided with little information on the matter.

“This comes to us with a small amount of backup information, but a rather large headline in the newspaper this morning,” said Weiss, who made the motion to delay the vote until next month. He added: “I just want to be able to vote based on a full report.”

But Councilman Nate Holden, who cast the only vote against delaying the contract, chided his colleagues for putting off their decision.

“You can’t legislate based on the newspaper,” Holden complained. “Some guy gets a pad in his hand, writes an article and you jump? The public eventually will be disappointed in our conduct if you continue to act along those lines.”

The controversy over the Winner contract comes at a time when the airport faces a large deficit because of increased security costs and lost concession and parking revenues following the terrorist attacks.

At a meeting at LAX on Tuesday, airport commissioners approved, 6-0, several measures that officials hope will help ease the worsening financial strain on the airport.

The commission authorized an application for a low-interest loan of up to $150 million from the federal government. If the application is approved, the airport would be able to borrow money from the charge tacked on to each passenger ticket.

Usually the money is set aside for programs such as soundproofing homes near the airport. But, after the September attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration authorized airports to borrow some of the funds for other purposes.

The airport doesn’t need to spend the entire amount, said Airport Commission President Ted Stein. The fund is so flush that no money will have to be taken away from soundproofing and land acquisition programs that are also financed by passenger ticket fees, airport officials said.

One use of the loan proceeds could be to pay for $45 million in increased security costs expected the rest of the fiscal year, according to a staff report on the matter.

The Airport Commission also approved a resolution that will allow the airport staff to ask the Internal Revenue Service whether it can use leftover bond sale proceeds to help replenish cash reserves. If the IRS agrees, about $62 million in bond proceeds could be transferred into the airport agency’s general fund.