113 VIPs get free Wichita airport parking, but not for long

With a new garage and $15-a-day parking at the Wichita airport, 113 VIPs still get to park for free.

The courtesy parking list is mostly a mix of local and federal elected officials, government department chiefs and staff, community business luminaries and aircraft industry executives.

It’s a perk the city will likely change. The airport director wants to cut back on the number of free passes, and the city manager wants to get rid of them.

The City Council will decide what to do in the next few weeks.

With all the current passes set to expire Dec. 31, Airport Director Victor White said he’ll recommend trimming the list going forward and tying future passes to positions, not individuals.

“I’ve been in this business 40 years and it’s not uncommon” to issue courtesy parking passes, White said. “However, we at the Airport Authority want to change the way this thing works.”

City Manager Robert Layton, who also has a large say at the city-owned airport, said he’ll recommend eliminating courtesy airport parking entirely, because the benefits aren’t worth the public perception of favoritism that goes along with it.

“I just think it’s important that there are no exceptions to our parking regulations,” Layton said.

He said that for several years he’s told City Hall employees with passes to use them only for official business and not their personal and vacation travel.

White said that’s been the understanding at the airport as well, but there really hasn’t been any way to police it until now, with the advent of electronic card readers that can record who goes in and out and when. The new card-reader system was installed as part of the project to improve the terminal and garage.

“Every employee who works at the airport has a parking pass that authorizes them to park in the employee parking lots and/or various secure areas such as ramp permits,” White said. “That is a very large group of hundreds of people and tenant vehicles and equipment.”

The list of courtesy passes is separate and allows pass holders to park in public parking areas, including the newly constructed garage and the close-in surface lot, where the cost is $15 a day.

Everyday employees have the new electronic cards that leave a record of their comings and goings.

But the courtesy pass holders still have a low-tech plastic card they show to the booth attendant on the way out of the parking lot, so their parking usage isn’t tracked, White said.

Setting a new policy on free parking passes will be up to the discretion of the Wichita City Council, which serves as the Airport Authority for Wichita Eisenhower National Airport.

In the past, the City Council has mostly let the airport staff and the Airport Advisory Board handle parking. But with all the changes at the airport – $160 million for a new terminal and $40 million for parking – it’s time for the elected council members to step in, said Mayor Jeff Longwell.

“That would be appropriate, given it’s a public space and a public issue,” he said.

White said he’ll bring the free-parking policy to the airport board at its Nov. 2 meeting, and Layton said he expects to bring it before the City Council at either the Nov. 10 or Nov. 17 meeting.

Who’s on the list?

No one seems to know when the airport started issuing VIP parking passes. White said he inherited the list when he was hired 10 years ago and his two immediate predecessors told him they did too.

So who’s on the list?

▪  The mayor and members of the City Council, including former Mayor Carl Brewer, who left office when his term expired in April. The list notes that council member Bryan Frye, who was elected in April, doesn’t have a pass in his own name. But the airport list noted he can use an extra “general use” pass issued to the council office.

▪ Thirteen members of the Airport Advisory Board, including former Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Bayouth, former state Sen. U.L. “Rip” Gooch and Cheney City Council member Carl Koster.

▪  Sedgwick County Commissioners Richard Ranzau, Dave Unruh, Karl Peterjohn and Tim Norton, and former Commissioner Jim Skelton and former County Manager William Buchanan. Also county Fire Chief Tavis Leake, Sheriff Jeff Easter and Public Works Director David Spears.

▪  U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts and Rep. Tim Huelskamp, plus an extra pass each for staff use. Rep. Mike Pompeo has three office passes, but his personal pass is listed as “returned without use & destroyed.”

▪  Wichita State University President John Bardo and USD 259 Superintendent John Allison.

▪ Thirty members and former members of city staff, including the city manager and directors of the police, fire, municipal court, public works, parks, library, housing, building and communications departments, plus the former directors of law, planning and government affairs.

▪  Current and former aviation manufacturing executives, including Textron Aviation CEO Scott Ernest, plus the company’s real estate manager; Spirit AeroSystems CEO Larry Lawson, plus two vice presidents; Bombardier/Learjet General Manager David Murray. Also former Learjet CEO Brian Barents, former Cessna CEO Jack Pelton and Cessna Chairman Emeritus Russ Meyer.

▪  Local business leaders, including Chamber of Commerce CEO Gary Plummer, plus two staffers; Visit Wichita CEO Susie Santo, plus one; Intrust Bank Chairman Charles Chandler and Vice Chairman J.V. Lentell and Steve Martens of the Martens Co. real estate firm. Also Tim Chase, former president of the Greater Wichita Economic Development Corp.

▪  Airline station managers and executives of various businesses around the airport.

No written directive

White said there’s no firm criteria for who gets passes.

“I can’t find any written policy or written directive that says who and why and how this works,” he said.

He said he started working on reforming the system around July, shortly after the opening of the new garage and before newspapers started questioning the free-parking lists at St. Louis and Kansas City airports in September.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the city’s airport had given out approximately 150 VIP parking passes, mostly to current and former government officials.

The Kansas City Star followed with a report on 29 passes issued there and later learned that five names – including two state legislators who resigned in disgrace amid intern sex-harassment scandals – had been scrubbed from the list before it was provided to the paper.

White said he thinks the vast majority of names on the Wichita courtesy parking list make sense.

For example, if city employees have to pay for parking and apply for reimbursement, the city government would essentially be sending taxpayer money to the airport.

The airport receives no tax support and is funded by local charges, including rent, concession and parking revenue, plus federal grants funded by fees collected from airlines and their customers, he said.

He also said he doesn’t have a problem comping parking for congressional officials, who were instrumental in helping the airport obtain the grants it needed to build the new terminal and who regularly act as an interface between the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The current and retired aviation executives got passes because they lent their contacts and personal reputations to the airport to try to recruit new tenants for airport property, White said. He said those passes are mostly used for picking up and dropping off business prospects, so letting them park for free is the least the airport can do.

General-use passes

White said he’ll recommend that the airport eliminate all or nearly all individual passes and instead grant general-use passes to the city and other agencies and companies with a demonstrated need to come and go.

For example, if the library director needed to go to a conference, she could check out a general City Hall pass and return it when she gets back, he said.

He said he plans to visit with the city manager and the Airport Advisory Board to “go through the list and figure out who needs to be on the new list.”

It may not get that far, because Layton said he thinks courtesy parking is simply more trouble than it’s worth.

“We could go into a discussion about what’s justified,” he said. But “It’s such a small amount I don’t think it’s really worth making that exception.”

He said it’s a small fraction of the overall cost of travel and almost everyone on the list could file for reimbursement anyway, he said.

“Most of us only travel a few times a year,” he said. “I don’t think it’s enough to justify a policy where there’s an exception to the parking payment process.”

County commissioners said they don’t really care one way or the other.

Commission Chairman Richard Ranzau said he has never used his, and Jim Howell, who replaced Skelton on the commission in January, said he didn’t even know he was supposed to get one.

“I never asked and nobody ever told me that,” Howell said. “I could give that perk up right now.”

This story was originally published October 24, 2015 at 4:26 PM with the headline "113 VIPs get free Wichita airport parking, but not for long."