KINGMAN — With District 2 Supervisor Rich Lettman seeking to bring “a little more artillery into this battle,” Mohave County’s governing board took several measures expanding what is now a full-blown “adversarial relationship” between the board of supervisors and the Mohave County Airport Authority board of directors.
Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport, operated by the MCAA, is on land owned by the county and leased to the authority in an agreement that doesn’t expire until 2049. The land includes not only the site for airport operations in Bullhead City but surrounding commercial property the MCAA sub-leases to private businesses such as Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Chili’s and IHOP. The businesses pay the MCAA rent for that land with those payments providing a significant portion of the authority’s regular revenue to run the public airport that receives no direct taxpayer funding.
The board of supervisors, at Monday’s meeting in Kingman, unanimously passed four motions dealing with airport authority matters with one asking a state legislative committee to look into “alleged criminal activity” that has been investigated and awaits possible action by the Mohave County Attorney’s Office.
The motion by Supervisor Sonny Borrelli, a former state senator who once served as chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, was a request to that committee, among other things, to audit the MCAA’s financials, audit the authority’s purchase of the fixed-base operations at Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport and to investigate “the alleged embezzlement or other criminal activity by the Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport employees to determine any deficiencies in financial controls by MCAA and recommendations to correct possible deficiencies.”
The “alleged embezzlement” claim caught the attention of Supervisor Don Martin.
“That implies criminal activity for sure,” Martin said, before asking for more detail.
“I think the airport authority themselves has already admitted that criminal activity took place,” Lettman said, without mentioning an investigation conducted by the Bullhead City Police Department last year into activities by former airport employees, preliminary results of which were forwarded to the Mohave County Attorney’s Office. William Davis, the deputy county attorney who provides legal counsel to the board, also made no reference to that investigation.
In December, Deputy County Attorney Karolina Czaplinska told the Daily News, “The case is being investigated further, therefore no charges have been filed yet.”
Lettman tried to provide some explanation, avoiding use of the word “criminal” for a few sentences.
“They would acknowledge they are missing over $100,000 of — depending on the interpretation — overspending, a little spending out of control, credit card. We’re not sure what all it is but they filed an insurance claim and got paid for it, so it’s not a big deal at the moment,” he said. But he later added, “I believe the airport authority would concur that criminal activity took place.”
“They’ve admitted to criminal embezzlement?” Martin asked point-blank.
“They’ve admitted that they’re missing over $100,000, yes,” Lettman answered. A few moments later, he added, “It’s alleged.”
Lettman said there was resistance by the MCAA presenting its financials to the board, referencing an email sent by an MCAA board member that implied that county personnel wouldn’t understand aviation financing.
“I didn’t know embezzlement or possible criminal activity could be so aviation specific,” Lettman said wryly, “but I think we all understand what it is.”
In a separate motion, Lettman asked for the county attorney’s office to investigate possible violations of the Arizona Open Meeting Law by the MCAA directors. He said several authority board members have contacted him about potential violations. MCAA Board President Bill Osborne has said that he “did not sweat the minutia of the Open Meeting Law,” so long as, in his words, the board continued to move forward “with transparency and good intent” to inform the public. Lettman is pretty sure that the Mohave County Attorney’s Office and, in turn, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office may have a different view of that minutia.
“The motion (to investigate those possible violations) is publicly letting that board know we’re going to collect that data…and if appropriate the county attorney’s office can refer it over to the attorney general of the state,” Lettman said.
The first motion was authorization of a “resolution of displeasure” directed at each MCAA board member for the authority’s refusal to respond to previous BOS requests. Lettman characterized that response — or lack of it — as “arrogance, stonewalling, chaos, delay, obstruction…and clearly opposition.”
He said the board action Monday was necessary because “it’s time to bring forward a little more artillery into this battle, so to speak.” In this case, he and the board are hoping the Arizona Legislature and its audit committee will provide the guns.
The resolution, he said, “tells that board that we are unhappy, we are displeased with the responses they have made to the resolutions that this board passed unanimously back in April.”
Those resolutions sought a formal presentation by MCAA board members and staff on the operation of the airport, access to complete audited financial statements from the last two years and a seat as a voting member on the authority’s board of directors.
“We asked for a voting member to be placed on that board so we could have a say, an influence, in the direction of the airport relative to the economic activity it generates.”
That “economic activity” is the flashpoint for the feudal wildfire.
“This all started at looking at some vacant land around the airport that was being unutilized and seeing if there was a way we could bring that land into more productive use, possibly back to the county for the purpose of selling it and using the proceeds off that land to pay for some of the capital improvement needs we have as a county,” Lettman said.
But that would require changes in the long-term leases between the county and the MCAA, including the lease for commercially zoned property along Highway 95. The county, while recipient of property taxes paid on the business buildings on the property, has no direct control over development on the property after ceding that control to the airport authority more than a decade ago.
“The economic development generated by this airport in the Bullhead City area is critical to the development of that part of the county in and of itself,” Lettman said. “We want the airport authority to run a successful airport and to generate the kind of economic activity we’re looking for and we believe that warranted a seat on the board — a voting member seat on the board of directors — for the airport authority.”
He said the MCAA’s “refusal to cooperate is intolerable.”
