And Then There Was The Indianapolis Airport Authority Power Grab Bill

Once again, the job of reporting the news that impacts you is left to the blogging community because the mainstream media simply refuses to do its job. Fellow blogger Pat Andrews has uncovered a bill that's now made its way through both the Indiana Senate and the House which will strip local zoning boards of any authority over lands under the control of the airport authorities, another one of those alter ego municipal corporations which are run by unelected, unaccountable boards who believe that they are above the law and do all that they can to screw over the general public. Here's the offending language that has been inserted into HB 1045 adding to the powers of airport authorities, including Indianapolis' airport authority:

To fix and determine exclusively the uses to which the airport lands may be put, including land use planning and zoning. All uses must be necessary or desirable to the airport or the aviation industry and must be compatible with the uses of the surrounding lands as far as practicable. The jurisdiction granted under this subdivision is superior to that of any other local government unit or entity with respect to airport lands.
 

As Andrews points out, this comes as a legislative response to an Indiana Court of Appeals ruling last year which held that land owned by airport authorities were subject to local zoning authorities. The bill also eliminates from the current law a 15-year limit on the term of any contract an airport authority can enter into with a private entity to maintain, operate and use the airport. The original bill authored by Rep. Bill Friend dealt only with joint use airports and had nothing to do with either of these subjects; they were amended into the bill in the Senate by Sen. Joe Zakas. This bastardized version of the original bill flew out of the Senate on a 47-2 vote. What's particularly infuriating is that our tax dollars are used by these unaccountable governmental entities to pay lobbyists to convince state lawmakers who are more concerned about who is going to buy their next free dinner at St. Elmo's or their next free tickets to a Colts or Pacers game than the general public they are elected to represent.