Mayor Rob Harrington vetoed a Charlotte City Council motion Monday that would have given council six weeks to review Charlotte Douglas International Airport's proposed new lease with its airlines before deciding on it.
Council had just passed the motion on a show of hands, setting a decision for its Nov. 23 business meeting. The count was not read aloud. Harrington said council hadn't had "sufficient discussion of the timeline."
"I'm going to veto that motion," he said. "I will work with council to set a time period that makes sense for council." He added that he was "not comfortable with a motion and a decision tonight to set a specific timeline."
The veto set aside a vote of the council that appointed Harrington mayor in June. At stake is the lease that sets how the city rents the airport's terminal, concourses and airfield to its airlines for 10½ years from Jan. 1, 2027. It would come with an estimated $2.1 billion construction program, and the airport estimates the airlines would pay about $3 billion over the term. None of those figures had been released as of Oct. 10.
What the veto does
Under the city charter, the mayor can veto most actions council takes, at the same meeting. A vetoed action goes automatically on the agenda of council's next meeting, and it takes effect only if council adopts it again with at least seven of its 11 members voting yes. Council's next meetings are a zoning meeting Monday, Oct. 19, and a business meeting Monday, Oct. 26.
Harrington did not say when he wants the lease back. He said he would work with council on "the appropriate time, the best time, consensus of council for it to come back."
Why some members wanted time
Council had not yet received the lease document. "I'm still waiting on a copy of the lease. I haven't read that," Council Member LaWana Mayfield said. Harrington said it would be made available to council and the public Tuesday.
Council Member Dimple Ajmera said council needed at least 45 days "to review this long document," and moved for it. Council Member Victoria Watlington said she wanted to make sure "we hear from the public." Council Member Ed Driggs warned that 45 days would run "right into peak airport traffic season" and proposed about three weeks instead; no one seconded it. He then proposed six weeks, so the review would end on a business meeting, and Ajmera and Mazuera Arias accepted. Haley Gentry, the airport's CEO, had told council the airport would look to it for direction on timing. "Please know we are ready when you are," she said.
What's in the lease
Airport staff laid out the terms:
- Term. 10½ years starting January 2027, with a possible five-year extension if the city and airlines agree on a gate project worth $500 million or more, or agree to extend near the end of the term.
- Construction. An estimated $2.1 billion program the airport calls CLT Beyond: a Concourse C expansion, a passenger tunnel from the atrium to Concourse C, a south ramp expansion, and planning and design for an atrium expansion and more international gates. Ted Kaplan, the airport's chief business and innovation officer, said that is roughly four times the program in the 2016 lease, which totaled about $465 million.
- What the airlines pay. About $3 billion in rents, fees and charges over the term, by the airport's internal estimate, Chief Financial Officer Mike Hill said.
- Revenue share. The airlines' share of certain terminal revenues would rise from 40% to 45%, leaving the city 55%. The split has been 60-40 since the original 1982 agreement, Hill said. The city would give up the 5 points in exchange for airline guarantees that protect the airport's finances in a downturn, which the old lease did not have, and for the airlines' backing of the construction program.
- Gates. Airlines would have to use their assigned gates more, a target of 5½ turns instead of four (a turn is one plane arriving and departing), and the city could take back gates that fall short, with use reviewed every year. The city would have 17 common-use gates, which it assigns as needed, including to airlines without a long-term lease. Hill called that a 70% increase since the 2016 agreement, partly from gates already taken back and from Spirit Airlines' gates after the carrier shut down.
Five airlines have signed the current agreement: American, Delta, Frontier, United and Southwest. American leases 93 of the airport's roughly 123 gates, Gentry said.
Workers, and what the lease can't do
Much of the questioning was about the people who work at the airport, many of whom work for airlines and contractors, not the city. Council Member JD Mazuera Arias said council has been "hearing from airport workers for four years consecutively."
"I think the success of our airport must also be measured by how we treat our employees," Ajmera said. She cited a 55-year-old airport worker who she said collapsed Sept. 17 while waiting to clean an aircraft and died. Mayfield said delays in emergency response were part of what happened. Gentry said the airport has been reviewing that day with American Airlines, the contractor ABM and first responders, that Medic, the county's ambulance service, arrived within a minute, and that the worker was taken by ambulance within about 25 to 28 minutes.
City attorneys told council they believe state law bars the city from using the lease to set wages, benefits or other conditions of employment for airline and contractor workers. The lease team reviewed the N.C. Wage and Hour Act, including recent changes, to avoid anything the city is preempted from doing, said Elizabeth Smithers, an assistant city attorney who works for the airport. City Attorney Andrea Leslie-Fite said the city believes working conditions and training are preempted as well, though she called it "a relatively new statute" and said her office would keep looking.
Harrington said he is referring those questions to council's Budget, Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, which will look at procurement policies the city could use to favor businesses "that provide sustainable employment for their employees," separate from the lease. Ajmera asked the airport for written follow-ups on worker safety reporting, wheelchair assistance, child care for early and late shifts, and how other airports handle gate use.
Several council members said they would support the lease. "I will be supporting it whenever this comes on our agenda," Mayor Pro Tem James Mitchell Jr. said. Driggs, who helped negotiate the last lease, called this one "a good deal for the city." Council Member Malcolm Graham called the lease vote "probably one of the most consequential votes that we will take."
What's next
The lease document was to be made available Tuesday; as of Tuesday afternoon, the airport's news page carried Monday's presentation but not the lease. No date has been set for a vote on the lease itself.