Ballot law lunacy: Hits Massport . . .
A Boston Herald editorial

Monday, August 20, 2001

The latest ploy from the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) crowd is truly
stunning. It's a proposed ballot question aimed at making the Massport Board
of Directors an elected body. Will the last passenger out of Logan Airport
please turn out the lights? Currently the board's seven members are
appointed by the governor for staggered terms. The appointments must include
a representative of organized labor and of both political parties.

Under the proposal drafted by Sumin Tchen, a Concord technology entrepreneur
and opponent of commercial air traffic at nearby Hanscom Field in Bedford,
the board members would be elected every eight years. His proposal would
also require Massport to draft a regional transportation plan every seven
years.

There is, of course, a solid legal case to be made - and Massport's
attorneys are prepared to do just that - that ballot questions may not
target one particular ``town, city or other political division'' and that
the Massachusetts Port Authority is clearly a ``political division.'' This
can't and shouldn't happen.

But beyond the constitutionality - an issue Attorney General Tom Reilly is
expected to make a decision on by Sept. 5 - is the mindset that has given
rise to it.

Airports are always difficult to site, to expand and even to maintain.
Authorities were designed - not just here, but nearly everywhere in the
nation - to accomplish some of those difficult things which cannot be
accomplished by elected officials.

The fact remains that Logan's neighbors may argue against a new runway
there, but plead for more regional transportation options. And Hanscom's
neighbors argue against expanding commercial traffic there, but probably
don't give two hoots about expansion at Logan or even at Worcester. Massport
has attempted to do right by all those who demand air travel and to spread
the burden. No elected board could accomplish that.


Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems,
Inc.
==========
**NOTICE:  In accordance with 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.**
==========