Mayor Picks Airport Commissioners

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his nominees to the civilian seven-member Airport Commission on Monday and said the group would focus on spreading air traffic among the region’s airports while limiting growth at Los Angeles International.

Airport-area activists lauded the eclectic body, but businesses expressed concern about the nomination of Valeria Velasco, an attorney who is president of a group that is suing the city over its $11-billion LAX modernization plan.

The selection of Velasco signals closer ties between the mayor’s office and community groups that have struggled to gain access to policymakers.

Nominees for the commission, who must be approved by the City Council, include several City Hall insiders with experience on city boards and commissions.

At a news conference just outside LAX, the mayor said he expected the group to improve safety and security at the four city-owned airports, while working to make Los Angeles more responsive to residents’ concerns by shifting some air traffic to other facilities.

He said that LAX is critical to the region’s economy, but that he expected other airports to help serve a projected doubling of air traffic in the Southland by 2030.

“It makes no sense for a city the size of Los Angeles to have only one airport,” he said, pausing periodically as jumbo jets and smaller aircraft screamed overhead. “The people of Los Angeles are willing to share in the benefits of air travel if Southern California is willing to share in the burdens.”

But persuading airlines to move flights to other airports -- and passengers to buy tickets for them -- is easier said than done. Several carriers added service at Ontario International in the last several years, only to cancel flights because they failed to make money.

The matter is complicated by the fact that other midsized airports in the region -- including Bob Hope in Burbank, Long Beach and John Wayne in Orange County -- cannot grow because of noise restrictions and capacity constraints.

Villaraigosa didn’t provide specifics on how a regional air traffic system would work, saying only that “we’ve got plenty of ideas.”

The nominees said they supported Villaraigosa’s vision of a regional system of airports.

“When you have a sprawling geographic area like you have in Southern California, it just seems illogical to focus everything on one particular area,” said Alan Rothenberg, a businessman with experience in law, banking and professional soccer. He served for the last decade on the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The nominees to the unpaid commission also include Fernando Torres-Gil, acting dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, a former member of the city’s planning and harbor commissions; and Joseph Aredas, vice president of the California Labor Federation and a member of the board of directors of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp.

Also nominated was Sylvia Patsaouras, a regional planner at the Southern California Assn. of Governments, who is married to Nick Patsaouras, a close advisor to the mayor on transportation issues.

Only one nominee, Walter Zifkin, chief executive emeritus with the William Morris Agency, was held over from former Mayor James K. Hahn’s administration.

Six of the nominees -- all except Michael Lawson, an attorney who heads the employee benefits group in the Los Angeles office of Skadden Arps law firm -- have donated money to Villaraigosa in the last five years.

The nominees agreed that they had a lot to learn. The panel, which generally meets every other week, oversees policy decisions at the city’s airport agency, Los Angeles World Airports, and is charged with handing out millions of dollars in contracts annually.

Rothenberg said his experience with the convention bureau gave him some exposure to airport issues, since the bureau “is effectively the marketing arm for Los Angeles World Airports.” Otherwise, he said, he had only a “surface knowledge” of the issues he would be grappling with.

The nominees signaled that they understood the challenge of coping with burgeoning growth at LAX, together with implementing millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements and dealing with continuing security and safety concerns.

“This morning I was offered congratulations,” Aredas said. “But on the other hand, people also offered their condolences.”

Community activists who attended the event cheered the nomination of Velasco, saying they believed Villaraigosa would follow through on his promises to limit growth at LAX.

“This is a whole different role for me,” said Velasco, who added that she first met the mayor 30 years ago when they advocated for immigrant rights as undergraduates at Cal State Long Beach and UCLA. “It’s such a great win for our community -- we’ve spent 10 years trying to educate people that we need a regional solution to airport growth.”

Business leaders expressed concern over Velasco’s nomination.

“Our only concern is the inclusion on the airport commission of an attorney-plaintiff who is suing to stop all projects” in the city’s $11-billion modernization plan for LAX, said Joe Czyzyk, the transportation committee chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber hopes the city will build the most popular projects in the plan, he said, including a transit hub and a consolidated rental car center.

Villaraigosa has said he wanted to eliminate the proposal’s most controversial elements, including a check-in facility near the San Diego Freeway.

What to do with the expansion plan is just one of many crucial issues facing the airport agency, which operates LAX, Ontario International and the Van Nuys and Palmdale airports.

Officials are planning a massive overhaul of aging infrastructure at the world’s fifth-busiest airport over the next four years. The commission will oversee construction contracts for a $337-million upgrade to add truck-sized explosives detection machines to baggage systems at LAX and Ontario, and a $341-million face lift for the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.

The mayor also said Monday that he would ask commissioners to help implement recommendations of a Rand Corp. study that found that long lines at ticket counters and security checkpoints at LAX presented a tempting target for terrorists.

But airport officials have said they couldn’t fix the problem in the short term because the cash-strapped airlines and the federal Transportation Security Administration, which manages screeners, were short-staffed. Villaraigosa has called on the carriers and the TSA to add personnel.

His nominees said they expect to spend the next few months setting priorities for the next four years.