Mystery Looms Over Investors In Airport Deal

Despite a recent attorney general's opinion, the identities of the individual investors who lent the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport Authority $5 million last year to buy land for the airport project remain a mystery.

Even the airport authority says it has no idea who stands behind SKB Investments Inc., the corporation that lent the authority the money. "We don't know who they are," said Carol Lindsey of Ozark International Consultants, the Fayetteville consulting firm that serves as administrative staff for the authority.

The authority borrowed the $5 million from SKB in December because it needed private dollars to match grant money the federal government awarded to buy land at the airport site, located near Highfill.

Ultimately, the authority intends to issue airport bonds to cover the private share of the airport financing. The bridge loan from SKB extends two years and is to be repaid with proceeds from the bond sales.

Although the names of the investors behind SKB have been kept from public view, it is apparent they are friendly to the airport project-the corporation, which was created only four days before the loan went through, lent the money at a low 4-percent interest rate.

The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas attempted in December to learn the names of the investors by contacting Ken Calhoon, the North Little Rock lawyer who was listed as SKB's president in incorporation papers filed with the secretary of state's office at Little Rock. Calhoon did not return repeated telephone calls.

Meantime, the authority referred all questions to The Llama Co., the Fayetteville investment-banking firm handling the financing for the airport project. David Hausam, vice president at Llama, told the newspaper he could shed no light on SKB because he was not at liberty to discuss client relationships. l

The Cherokee Newspaper Group, which publishes weekly newspapers in Lincoln, Prairie Grove and West Fork, has taken the inquiry a step further.

Relying on the state's Freedom of Information Act, the newspaper group filed a request with the airport authority to find out the investors. The request proved fruitless and the newspaper group then sought an attorney general's opinion on whether the authority is required to turn over the list of investors.

Although the attorney general's office hedged in its response, the opinion appears generally to support the Cherokee Newspaper Group's efforts. Attorney general's opinions, however, are not binding.

"In the absence of any facts or specific information forming a basis for applying any exception to the FOIA," the opinion says, "I must conclude generally that the investor list is subject to public disclosure. The existence of other relevant facts may of course impact this determination."

Contacted Wednesday by The Morning News, Boyce Davis, the owner of the Cherokee Newspaper Group, said he intended to approach the authority again about the request now that the opinion has come out. Davis said he was still reviewing a recent Arkansas Supreme Court decision in an FOI case that he said appears to have bearing on his own effort.

That case involved a May 1994 attempt by Mark Swaney of Fayetteville to gain access to the working' papers of a firm hired with state money to audit he Arkansas Development Finance Authority.

Davis said the Swaney case appears to "fit the facts we have with the airport authority."

But John Elrod, the authority's attorney, disagreed. "We think that the facts are different," he said.

Davis left open the possibility Wednesday that Cherokee would file an FOI lawsuit if it does not get the investors' list from the authority.