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Port-authority members disclose interests
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The large amount of public disclosure of the private business interests of board members at Wednesday’s meeting of the Western Reserve Port Authority was not just a coincidence.
“I think it’s very important,” Scott Lynn, chairman of the port authority, said after the meeting regarding board members making it clear to the public when their personal business interests could be viewed as conflicting with board business.
The port authority runs the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and encourages Mahoning Valley economic development.
Lynn, a pilot for the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp,, and fellow board member Scott Lewis, also a pilot, abstained from voting Wednesday on a new lease and operating agreement with airport fuel handler and service provider Winner Aviation.
They also abstained from voting when another matter involved Winner Aviation. Lynn stated that he and Lewis were abstaining because both men buy fuel from Winner as pilots.
Furthermore, when board member Rich Musick, a longtime insurance professional, gave a presentation on the insurance that the board buys from two insurance companies, board member Don Hanni asked Musick to clarify that he had no financial “interest” in either company.
“That’s right,” Musick said.
“Any time you’re on a public body, you have to be squeaky clean,” Lynn said after the meeting. “I’m not involved in negotiating fuel purchases” for DeBartolo, “but I abstained nonetheless,” Lynn said.
Hanni, who recently criticized a real-estate deal involving Lewis and another one involving former board member John Masternick, because they involved projects closely tied to the port authority, says he will make it his job to seek clarification whenever it is needed.
“Because of the history of this board, it’s going to be my job ... to make sure to know that there is no vested interest, there is no one making a buck off of it,” he said.
The new lease and operating agreement started saving Winner about $45,000 per year in August but now becomes official.
The agreement also says Winner plans to expand its business in the next two to five years by Winner constructing two to three additional hangars, said Rick Hale, Winner Aviation owner since 2008.
This time last year, Winner said it was considering moving its operation, along with its 40 full-time and 20 part-time employees, out of the airport if a better operating agreement was not put in place.