Press opinion: Looks like a plane crash from here

Kootenai County commissioners decided to "go a different direction" with management of the airport, and they certainly did.

Straight down.

By firing 20-year Airport Manager Greg Delavan, the county has nosedived smack dab into the middle of the public's interest. Disposing of Delavan like spent jet fuel has lit a fire under countless supporters of both Delavan and Coeur d'Alene Airport/Pappy Boyington Field.

County commissioners Dan Green and Todd Tondee called Delavan onto the carpet at the end of the day last Friday before promptly yanking it out from under him. They told Delavan just what they told The Press: He didn't do anything wrong. They just wanted to "go a different direction." And they didn't bother to mention what direction that might be.

As with so many discipline and dismissal issues with public employees around here, it might take awhile to put all the puzzle pieces together. Officials who trumpet their commitment to transparency at election time are often found lacking when practice, not preaching, is needed.

Timing of the abrupt directional shift is curious at best. Control of the three-person county commission goes to two newcomers in January, begging the question: If airport leadership needed to be changed, why not wait nine weeks and let the new, duly elected commissioners make that move?

We're stunned at Delavan's unexplained dismissal and can only hope at this point that he hasn't been fired because he's as outspoken as he is competent. And he is both of those things, in spades.

Even more troubling, though, is the cloud of doubt that commissioners have now placed firmly over the airport's future. Surely they know that Delavan was a driving force in ensuring our region's superb airport was becoming a formidable hub not just for the aerospace industry, but for numerous other companies which could benefit from the business-friendly environment at the air park, as well as the obvious transportation extras.

If Delavan was taken out because he supports airport expansion as a major driver of the local economy, there might be thousands more of us who need to be shoved aside, too. According to the August 2013 issue of North Idaho Business Journal, our little airport was responsible for $150 million to $170 million to the local economy in everything from fuel sales to superb jobs at Empire Airlines.

A year after Delavan started at the airport, a 1994 University of Idaho study estimated the airport's economic impact at $30 million. In 2009, an Idaho Transportation Department Division of Aeronautics analysis showed the airport's economic impact as $129,778,500 - far more than any of the state's 15 other regional business airports, with Nampa coming in a distant second at $43 million and Sandpoint third at $33 million. In short, Coeur d'Alene's airport rivals Boise for economic impact and dwarfs all other regional airports in the state.

For that, we need to "go in a different direction."

Buckle up and hold on tight, taxpayers. The ground is getting mighty big, mighty fast.