Burbank Halts Security Upgrades at Its Airport

Burbank building and safety inspectors Friday halted efforts to make federally mandated security upgrades at Burbank Airport, as city and airport officials played out the latest moves in a years-long battle over airport expansion.

While both sides said they thought the immediate standoff over the construction could be resolved soon, the dispute underlined the stalemate that has marked virtually all efforts to modernize the airport’s runways and aging terminal building, which serve 4.5 million passengers a year.

For at least two decades, Burbank, backed by vocal residents, has opposed plans by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority to expand the facility.

During the late 1990s, the city won a series of state court cases giving it control over land-use decisions at the airport. Since then, the airport authority has been forced to set aside plans to build a new terminal to replace the current building, which is too close to the east-west runway to meet modern safety standards, according to federal officials.

But airport authorities, citing federal security upgrades ordered in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, have tried to move ahead with a 40,000-square-foot expansion to the 173,000-square-foot main terminal building. The airport must meet a Dec. 31 deadline to upgrade airport security, including installation of explosive-detection equipment and expanded baggage screening.

The effort to expand the terminal has been stalled since October by a voter-approved initiative known as Measure A. Under the measure, the City Council is not allowed to approve any construction or renovation of the airport unless a mandatory curfew is imposed and a limit is set on the number of daily flights.

On Friday, the airport authority won a victory when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Montes declared Measure A unconstitutional. The voter measure violated state laws governing airports, elections and the environment, the judge said.

Voters cannot dictate how future city councils should act on airport-related issues, and key provisions of the initiative were “so overboard as to unconstitutionally interfere with the legitimate exercise of the city’s police power,” the judge ruled. Even as Montes was ruling, however, city officials dispatched the building and safety inspectors to the airport.

“We aren’t doing anything with the airport that we wouldn’t do with any other large corporation or individual who didn’t take out permits,” said Dennis Barlow, Burbank’s city attorney. “It’s a health and safety issue.”

In an indication of the lack of trust that has developed between the city and the airport authority, Burbank City Manager Robert R. “Bud” Ovrom and other city officials speculated that airport officials had rushed construction to foment a crisis that would end up in federal court and ultimately weaken Burbank’s power over land-use decisions at the airport.

But Victor Gill, spokesman for the airport authority, said that by moving ahead with the construction, the airport’s governing board was making a good-faith effort to comply with federal rules.

“Obviously the authority was committed to going forward with the project,” Gill said. “But now that the project is shut down, the authority will continue to pursue the options that are available until those permits are obtained.”

Madelyn Sawyer, a security director for the federal Transportation Security Administration who oversees Burbank and Long Beach airports, said she was confident that the city and the airport officials could work out their differences and meet the deadline.

“The airport needs to have a building permit, and that’s the bottom line,” she said.

Ovrom said building permits are expected to be issued within two weeks. The project was shut down early Friday because “they started before [Measure A] was struck down,” Ovrom said.

In anticipation of the court’s order, the Burbank City Council on Tuesday adopted interim regulations that permit the city staff to approve construction “as long as we can make a determination that it is all done for security purposes, not expansion.”

Those regulations also established a 45-day moratorium on nonsecurity-related airport construction. Some exceptions include widening corridors to meet local fire safety codes and enlarging restrooms as required under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, Ovrom said.

Burbank city officials had sought to have Measure A invalidated because they felt it infringed on the authority of the city government. Because the measure was a voter-passed initiative, the city paid the roughly $100,000 in legal costs of a group of voters who supported the measure in court. The city will not pay for an appeal, however, Ovrom said.

In terms of passenger traffic, Burbank Airport is the fourth largest in the region. Its 4.5 million passengers annually compares to 61 million at Los Angeles International Airport, 7.3 million at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport and 6.7 million at Ontario Airport.

The dispute over the Burbank terminal is one of the longest-running public policy conflicts in the region. The debate has continued since at least 1980, when the Federal Aviation Administration said that the terminal structure was too close to the east-west runway.

After spending millions of dollars in legal and public relations costs, the two sides agreed in 1999 to build a 14-gate, 330,000-square-foot replacement terminal on land formerly owned by Lockheed Martin. The terminal would be expandable to 19 gates.

In return, airport officials agreed to concessions including closure of Burbank’s passenger terminal between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Within weeks, however, the plan ran into bitter opposition from local residents, political leaders, the airlines and the FAA, which called the planned terminal closure a de-facto curfew, which is restricted under federal law. With the proposed settlement falling apart, city and airport officials tried to salvage a terminal replacement plan. But a group called Restore Our Airport Rights led an effort to place Measure A on the ballot to help control growth and aircraft noise at the airport.

Within days after the measure passed, Burbank sought a court ruling on whether the city could legally enforce the measure.

Charles Lombardo, an airport authority commissioner, applauded Montes’ ruling.

“It’s a shame that the residents of Burbank were misled into some simplistic measure that did not address the reality of what needs to be dealt with,” Lombardo said. “These people would have you believe by signing a piece of paper that you’re going to get whatever you want. You’re not. And now we have to undo the damage that was done.”