An Ohio State University scholar, writing about how Detroit "can generate or save revenue that might best be used reimbursing creditors." takes aim at an easy money-saving target.
Commercial flights last used City Airport in 1994.
(Detroit Historical Society photo)
Here's what Michael Farren, an engineer working on a doctorate in applied economics, suggests at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy blog:
One way to move Detroit forward during and after bankruptcy is by unloading municipal assets, especially the assets that have been dragging the city down. . . .
A good example of such an asset can be found at the city-owned Coleman A. Young International Airport, or City Airport. . . .
The airport has consistently overspent its budget each year for more two decades, but almost every year the city bailed it out. From 1992 through 2012, Detroit gave the airport subsidies totaling $33.3 million ($42.2 million in 2012 dollars). Requiring Detroit taxpayers to pay for services that the vast majority of them never use or benefit from is bad fiscal policy.
Detroit officials recognized that City Airport was a problem.
Mayors Young, Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick attempted to expand the airport's runway length, and thereby allow commercial airlines to use modern passenger and cargo planes at the airport, but they all failed. (The last large commercial airline to use the airport left in 1994.) More recently, Mayor Dave Bing sought to contract City Airport's management to a private corporation or to the Wayne County Airport Authority, but he also was unsuccessful. . . .
Detroit needs to make a fresh start after bankruptcy and break the cycle of bad policies that caused the financial disaster in the first place. Relieving the city's taxpayers of the burden of City Airport would be a good start.
