Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Clark Continues High-Flying Ways At Indianapolis Airport Authority

The CEO of the Indianapolis Airport Authority is under investigation by Florida prosecutors for his lavish travels while serving as head of an airport in Jacksonville, Florida. The IBJ's Chris O'Malley finds that John Clark spent $37,000 on travel during his first year alone at the Indianapolis Airport Authority. That amount covered the cost of 23 trips, including a conference in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. Clark attended another conference in Manchester, England. And he attended another gathering at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, home to the Masters PGA Golf Tournament. Clark even billed the airport authority for his lodging at the Super Bowl in Miami. If you average four days for each trip, it means Clark spent at least three months of his first year on the job out of town. Clark is paid $270,000 a year.

This guy should be fired right now. It's obvious he is all about the glitz and glamour of the job and doesn't have a clue how to run an airport. When you're spending all your time after taking a new job travelling around the world at taxpayers' expense, you can't be devoting your energies to figuring out how we're going to pay for this $1 billion-dollar airport. Revenues are plummeting as costs skyrocket. The only reason Clark was hired was because Lacy Johnson, the former President of the Indianapolis Airport Authority, demanded that an African-American be hired to run the airport. Johnson's objective is to make sure he has someone in charge who will dole out MBE contracts to firms that he and his friends control. After all, shouldn't Lacy be able to afford another Bentley?

6 comments:

Hoosier in the Heartland said...

$37,000 in travel?
What does he do? Fly first class?

M Theory said...

Lacy and all his friends are so much better than the taxpayers and should all drive Bentleys.

We need to work hard and pay as much as 75% of our incomes in taxes and drive 10 year old used cars so they can live like the Ritz.

Downtown Indy said...

I guess the good news, such as it is, is that he's not engaging influence peddlers to give him perks such as free airfare.

Cato said...

"This guy should be fired right now. It's obvious he is all about the glitz and glamour of the job and doesn't have a clue how to run an airport."

Par for the course for the Republicans. Remember the ICJI travel scandal, and we are all familiar with Ballard's penchant for traveling on our dime. Heck, he even expenses his candy bars - no lie.

By the way, where did the ICJI people end up?

Gary R. Welsh said...

Carl Brizzi refused to investigate Bolejack because his office received money from her agency. Then-U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks got the call from the governor's office to kill the investigation so she dumped it in the wastebasket along with the FBI's investigation of the theft of the Lawrence water utility.

Marycatherine Barton said...

I certainly hope that our present CEO of the Indpls Airport Authority was not hired for the slimy reason AA has concluded, but I definitely agree, that he, John Clark, should be fired, asap-