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Judge delays ruling on airport lawsuit
By Lynn Hotaling
The controversy that began with Tom McClure’s Jan. 12 removal from Jackson County’s Airport Authority remains unresolved after a Superior Court Judge last week did not issue a final ruling.
Judge Ronald Payne listened and asked questions April 6 as lawyers for both sides argued the merits of their respective positions, but he decided after an hour that he needed more information.
Telling both sides to round up all the documents they could to bolster their case, Judge Payne said he would accept the information April 11 during a court session in Haywood County and would try to have a decision by the end of this week.
The trial is centered around whether Jackson County’s Commissioners were within their authority when they removed then-Chairman McClure from his seat on the airport board and attempted to remove him from the county’s Economic Development Commission as well.
Former Authority Secretary-Treasurer Jim Rowell and another current member, Eldridge Painter, join McClure as plaintiffs in seeking injunctive relief to restore the airport oversight group to its pre-Jan. 12 composition.
Defendants are Jackson County Commissioners and current Airport Authority members Eddie Madden (also a county commissioner), Gary Buchanan and Ed Riley.
Judge Payne issued a temporary restraining order March 30 that prevented the Authority from holding meetings or conducting business until he made his final ruling.
That judgment was expected last Wednesday in Jackson County; however, Payne instead extended the restraining order. He did loosen it slightly to allow the Authority to pay current bills, but the group is still barred from holding business sessions.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Joe McGuire of Asheville summarized his clients’ position, indicating their view that McClure and Rowell should still be officers and that both Buchanan and Riley had been improperly appointed.
Commissioners in 1997 voted to create an independent airport authority, which was organized based on enabling legislation passed by the General Assembly, McGuire said.
McGuire also cited an opinion from the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill that indicates commissioners would not have the right to remove an appointee except in the case of malfeasance.
After McClure was removed, commissioners determined that the remaining members of the authority were serving improperly since none of them had ever been sworn in by the Jackson County Clerk of Court’s Office.
Madden, Buchanan, Rowell, Painter and Chip Hall were all re-appointed and took their oaths. That group then met to choose two names to recommend to county commissioners so the sixth authority member could be appointed. County leaders Feb. 15 chose Riley.
When the Authority met next, on Feb.23, Buchanan was elected chairman and Riley secretary-treasurer, with Riley, Madden and Buchanan voting in favor and Painter and Rowell dissenting. Hall, who was not present, was named vice chairman in the same fashion.
County attorney Paul Holt represented the commissioners during last week’s hearing.
His argument began with a listing of questionable financial decisions by the Economic Development Commission, which McClure still chairs. Holt also told the court about a letter the county received in December 2003 pointing out a statutory budget violation on the part of the Airport Authority.
Holt then raised the issue of whether McClure ever was sworn in as an Authority member, a matter Judge Payne was interested enough in to call Clerk of Court Ann Melton to the witness stand after McClure said he remembered that she had administered his oath.
On the stand, Melton, who was deputy clerk of court at the time McClure joined the Authority, said she did not remember giving the oath to McClure but did not say for a fact that she did not. When asked if her testimony was that she did not administer the oath or if she did not recall doing so, she said her answer was that she did not recall.
McClure then took the witness stand and said that he took the oath in the old commissioners’ board room at the Justice Center before the first Airport Authority meeting he attended after being appointed to that board in 2001.
After McClure stated that he had taken the oath, Holt asked why those appointed while he was chairman were not sworn in.
“I assumed they were,” McClure said.
Attorney McGuire introduced two letters written to Rowell by Jackson County Manager Ken Westmoreland. The first, sent to Rowell when he was initially appointed in 2003, made no mention of an oath. The second, mailed in February of this year after Rowell was re-appointed, instructed him to go by the Clerk’s office to be sworn in.
Further complicating the Airport Authority’s status is a bill introduced March 23 in the General Assembly.
Filed by Rep. Phil Haire (D-Sylva), the bill states it is “an act to consolidate the existing Macon County Airport Authority and the existing Jackson County Airport Authroity to create a new Macon-Jackson regional airport authority.”
Both Haire and Commissioners’ Chairman Brian McMahan said the bill can be amended through May and that disbanding Jackson County’s Airport Authority is not necessarity their intent.
Haire said the bill, copied from legislation that created another regional airport authority, was prepared hastily on the last day that would allow it to be considered this year.
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