Welcome to the fray; the airport issue

     You have to give Commissioner Doug Howard credit for trying. For what seemed like a week last St. Patrick's day, he valiantly slogged through what was supposed to be a demonstration of the new board of commissioners communion with The People, knowing the airport people would be there.
     This was The Moment when the new leaders would show everyone they are Listening, and Doing The Right Thing by getting all the facts lined up before they continued the actions of the previous board to upgrade the county airport. The stated purpose of the open meeting was to hear from staff on what happens next, and what the consequences of any actions -- or inaction -- might be.
     The previous board made the decision to go ahead with upgrades to the airport, rather than shut the airport down for perhaps a year while the old runway was resurfaced. The Federal Aviation Agency had already noted that the current runway was inadequate in various ways for future use, and something was going to have to be done to retain certification.
     Citizens opposed, of course, were in attendance at the St. Patrick's Day party, and took advantage of the opportunity to speak up, even though it was supposed to be a briefing for the elected decision makers, not another public hearing. Indeed, Howard made it clear at the top of the meeting that they were not there to debate (again) the merits of the airport project, but to get information from staff and state aviation agency people on where they were in the processes, and what the options were in the future.
     Mary Kowalski and Gary Johnson were having none of it. They interrupted the meeting repeatedly, and the low came when Kowalski, who was a loser candidate for commissioner in the last election, made what some might consider libelous remarks about the airport manager, Joseph McKelvey, and suggested that he should not even be in the room.
     "We thought when you were elected that all of these staff people would be gone," was a comment caught on the audio, and another mumbled that the new board of commissioners was no better than the last.
     A woman in the audience, out of order, asserted that The People had decided that the airport project should be aborted, at which point Howard, who has portrayed himself as something of a populist, said, "I don't think you speak for all of the people of Carroll County," which I thought was the echo of something I once said, but there it is.
    It was ugly.
    But then it was ugly back when Kowalski was telling people that terrorists would use the airport to attack America. It was ugly when she and others who chose to ignore the truth were saying that planes landing at Westminster were dumping toxic fuel as they approached for landing. It was ugly then, and again last week, when Johnson, another unsuccessful candidate for commissioner, got personal and claimed to know more about the processes and the objectives and motives and potentials at the airport.
    When a state aviation spokesman testified, he was dismissed.
     In short, the intentions of the board to get information from staff in a transparent way fell on deaf ears.
     As Yogi Berra said, it was deja vu all over again.
     Bottom line: The new board got a lesson on what it's like to do the right thing for the overwhelming, but perhaps quiet, population of the county, while watching public tantrums by a very small majority armed with invalid but noisy arguments.