Thank you to Doug Grow for his article in today's StarTribune on the
resumption of Metropolitan Airports Commission meetings beyond the security
checkpoints at the airport ("MAC seems safe from any attack"):
http://www.startribune.com/stories/465/3175790.html
Grow's description of a public authority that wants to be insulated from
public participation reminds me of historian Robert A. Caro's classic work
"The Power Broker" which tells the story of the grandfather of the public
authority, New York's Robert Moses. Although Moses began his career as a
reformer, he came to see the public as an impediment to his own personal
vision for New York's development. Moses was never elected to public office,
but during the fifty plus years he held power through public commissions and
authorities in New York City and State, nobody played a larger role in the
development of public works there.
No matter where you come down on Minneapolis issues such as airport noise,
runway expansion or the MAC's relationship with Northwest Airlines, it is
important to work to keep that body's activities clearly within the public's
view lest it become, like New York's Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority,
a private fiefdom using public money and credit to advance the interests of
the few.
Doug Grow is right to suggest that moving meetings out from behind the
security checkpoint lines at the airport is a necessary first step in
advancing the public's interest in transparency at the MAC.
Paul C. Rohlfing
Now in Bethesda, Maryland - formerly Linden Hills and Lyndale
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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