NWA Regional Airport - Critics say Clinton's friends, benefactors to benefit most

The Associated Press
October, 1995

LITTLE ROCK - Federal involvement in an airport that would benefit President Clinton's wealthy friends and political benefactors has raised questions about whether the airport is getting an unfair push from the White House.

The Waltons and the Tysons, who turned local operations into the Wal-Mart and Tyson chicken empires, support building the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport on a 2,100-acre site near their headquarters.

The Federal Aviation Administration has spent $22 million so far and, until airport directors reduced the airport's budget by 24 percent, spoke of contributing $60 million despite Congress lopping more than $200 million from funds earmarked to maintain existing airfields.

Administration critics, cited in the conservative newsletter CounterPunch, and others allege lobbying by Clinton adviser Mack McLarty opened the funding spigot, a charge a high-ranking FAA official in Washington said was unfounded.

"I've not had any conversations with anyone from the White House," said Cynthia Rich, the agency's associate administrator for airports. She denied any administration pressure and noted bipartisan support for the project, including former Republican Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt and current members of Arkansas' congressional delegation.

Late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his daughter, Alice, were among the founding members the Northwest Arkansas Council, a private consortium formed in 1990 to push the airport project. So were Tyson chairman Don Tyson, a longtime personal friend and past political backer of Clinton, and Tyson chief counsel Jim Blair, also a chum of the president who handled Hillary Rodham Clinton's lucrative commodities trading.

Months before being elected president in 1992, then-Gov. Clinton signed legislation allowing tax-free foreign trade zones within the airport authority's operating area and offering incentives to aerospace companies moving to the state.

Since he became president, the FAA has poured $22 million into the project for land acquisition and other preparatory work. Airport officials had hoped to get $18 million more next year but FAA officials are noncommittal about future funding with budget cuts looming. Another $20 million in contributions was discussed.

Carol Lindsey, co-owner of the consulting firm hired to provide administrative staff for airport authority, defended the project's supporters, including Tyson and Wal-Mart, and chided its critics. "Certainly their companies are going to get a benefit from it," Lindsey said. 'The day (critics) can contribute as much to the Arkansas economy and the national economy, they may have some room to squawk, no pun intended."

The most vocal opponents want to halt what they view as an unnecessary drain on dwindling federal money for airfield improvements throughout the region.

'There's no justification for the FAA ever even to have endorsed a project of that magnitude," said Bob Johnson, director of Fort Smith Regional Airport, whose governing board has petitioned the agency to stop spending money on the project.

The nearest major airport, Tulsa International in Oklahoma, is taking a neutral stand, noting the competition but supporting anything that improves the national aviation system, said Carl Remus, Tulsa's deputy director in charge of finance and administration.

The project also has been endorsed by Fayetteville and four other cities in the areas, as well as Washington and Benton counties.

Northwest Arkansas Regional's federal money has come from a $324 million pool of discretionary funds derived mostly from taxes on sales of tickets and aviation fuel at the nation's airports. Few airports capable of handling passenger jets have been built from the ground up in the past 25 years.

The most recent to open, Denver International in February, has been widely panned as a $4 billion boondoggle because of cost overruns and high boarding fees.

Boyd, who forecast the Denver debacle, predicted a similar fate for northwest Arkansas facility. Facing federal budget cuts, the airport authority slashed some $35 million from the planned $144 million project last month and promised to find millions more to cut to produce a "100 percent fatfree" facility by 1998.

The cuts would reduce the facility's projected average boarding cost from as high as $15.16 to $9.91, about $2 higher than the national average.

"No airline in their right mind is going to try to access northwest Arkansas at $10 a head," he said, because of the size of the market.

Airport supporters deny claims the airport would be little more than a jetport for flying Tyson chickens to Japan and Wal-Mart's Asian imports into the United States for distribution. "It's just absolute nonsense," said Tyson spokesman Archie Schaffer.

He said the company will continue to ship frozen chicken to Japan, already its largest export market, in refrigerated ships because air cargo is too expensive.

George Westmoreland, a financial analyst with Merrill Lynch in Rogers and the airport authority's first chairman, scoffed at charges of a scheme to. enrich industrial giants.

"There's nothing insidious about any of this stuff," Westmoreland said. "These are people who are trying to help their communities and give something back and provide the infrastructure needed to make this area grow."