Bradley International Airport (2000)

In March 2000, the Legislative Program Review and Investigations Committee voted to do a study of Bradley International Airport to determine if the airport is optimally achieving its economic development potential. The call for the study came after several consultant studies and the Governor's Council on Economic Competitiveness and Technology's report were issued calling for substantial change at Bradley. However options resulting from those reports came too late in the spring of 2000 to be acted on during that legislative session.

The program review study found that Bradley lacked a business development focus, and was run like a state agency, despite being established as an enterprise fund, reliant on its own revenue, and not taxes, to operate. The committee also found that the Department of Transportation (DOT), which manages and operates Bradley, had delayed some of the larger projects called for in the 1993 airport master plan, which placed the construction of a new terminal three years behind its 1999 completion date.

The committee concluded that airside operations, and not business development, had been Bradley's major focus, and to be successful Bradley must place greater emphasis and resources on business development, including marketing and customer relations.

The program review committee determined that Bradley needed outside direction from key business leaders, with authority over key personnel, financing, planning and operations. The committee developed a three-pronged approach, encompassing 14 separate recommendations, to improve Bradley's structure and operations:

· additional resources and staff with appropriate business development background;

· removal of cumbersome state bureaucratic constraints on Bradley's operations;

· a change in governance structure to introduce a Board of Directors with authority over key Bradley decisions.

Legislative action. All of the committee's recommendations were incorporated into Substitute Senate Bill 1276, which went to the Transportation Committee but no action was taken. The Transportation Committee raised an omnibus transportation strategy bill (HB 6985), which eventually was passed (P.A. 01-5) during the June Special Session. The act contains some provisions that are similar to the program review bill, but other elements require less change for Bradley than program review's bill.

The act establishes a seven-member board comprised of the commissioners of transportation and economic and community development, as well one appointed member each from the Connecticut Transportation Strategy Board, and community advisory board (both boards are also created in the act) and three public members. Individual members will be appointed by legislative leaders or the governor, as specified in the bill. (The program review bill had called for nine members - the same two agency commissioners -- and seven members appointed by the governor with legislative approval). The act requires the appointed members to be senior business leaders or executives with corporate or institutional experience; the program review bill included a similar requirement.

The act abolishes the Bradley Airport Commission, and replaces it with a community advisory board (CAB), provisions also included in the program review bill. The act specifies the appointees to the community advisory board consist of the chief elected officials of the four towns surrounding Bradley, while the program review bill had not changed the membership of the previous Bradley Airport Commission, but had made its role advisory, and changed its functions.

Public Act 01-5 outlines 14 functions the Bradley Board of Directors must perform, many of them comparable to functions contained in sSB 1276. Three major differences are:

· SB 1276 called for the airport management and organizational configuration to be outlined in statute while P.A. 01-5 requires the board, in consultation with the DOT commissioner, to establishes its management and organizational structure.

· SB 1276 authorized the board, after a transition period ending January 2003, to develop job descriptions for its management team, including a Chief Executive Officer for Bradley, with those positions filled by the board. Public 01-5 does not change the hiring or reporting of Bradley management, but does require that consultants recommended by the board and hired by DOT must report to the board and not the department.

· SB 1276 authorized the Bradley Board to oversee management of the airport, including setting rates and contracting for the airport. P.A. 01-5 maintains the DOT management of Bradley but gives the board oversight authority --- such as approval of the airport's operating and capital budget, and review of significant contracts related to airport operations.

Compliance. To assess the implementation status of the legislation, DOT was asked to confer with the Bradley Board and respond to the committee regarding progress made in fulfilling the board's mandated functions. The table below lists the board's major functions, the level of compliance achieved to date, along with explanatory comments on the board's progress. The committee recognizes that the board has not been operational all that long, and Public Act 01-5 gave the board somewhat less independent authority than SB 176. Therefore, it is still too early to evaluate whether the board will assume the oversight and leadership role necessary to direct Bradley on its new path.