For those of you that have not been following the situation, local attorney Steve Burton was added to the Airport Authority’s Board in the last couple of months. Since then, he has been a tempest in a teapot, challenging status quo and making the establishment more than a little uneasy. Most of his arrows have been fired either directly or indirectly at Louis Miller, Tampa International Airport’s Executive Director.
In his first meeting, at the protest of Tampa Mayor and TIA Board Member Pam Iorio, he called for a special committee to look at why TIA does not have more international traffic. More recently, one of Miller’s decisions to raze a building on airport grounds has not only raised eyebrows, but also raised the ire of Burton and other Board Members. Apparently, Miller did not disclose to the board that Moffit Cancer Center had offered to lease the building, and it was not an obsolete albatross, as had been portrayed by Miller. One can only speculate as to why Miller would make such a decision, because he has provided the public with no reasonable response. But, as an outsider looking in the best possible portrait that can be painted is that the decision was questionable.
There is increasing concern in the area that our government leaders are not doing enough to motivate economic development. And, now, Miller, the Director of a facility that can have direct consequence to the area’s economic health, is involved in a brouhaha about making a decision concerning one of TIA’s assets that, if the apparent correct decision were made, would provide a fairly meaningful job to the area’s lifeless construction industry, not to mention an additional revenue stream for the Airport.
If our area is going to start seeing the light at the end of a very dark economic tunnel, we must hold our officials’ collective feet to the fire. Needless to say, if Burton entered his position with an agenda aimed at Miller, he just acquired a little more ammunition.
Here is more about TIA’s office building from the Tampa Bay Business Journal:
Miller didn’t tell the authority at its Jan. 7 meeting that Moffitt’s commercial real estate broker had approached his staff as far back as October about leasing the 40,000-square-foot building at 4101 Jim Walter Blvd., public records show.
