City Council Explores Shifting Cleveland Hopkins Airport Governance to Independent Authority
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Members of Cleveland City Council are exploring the possibility of turning over the management of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to an independent authority, in an effort to improve the operation of the city-owned facility.
The airport is currently managed by a director who reports directly to the mayor, with oversight from Cleveland City Council.
Council member Kerry McCormack, who chairs City Council’s Transportation & Mobility Committee, said there may be a better way.
He and fellow council member Charles Slife, who is vice chair of the Transportation Committee, recently directed staff to research the possibility of establishing an independent authority to provide oversight to the airport.
The authority could be structured in a number of different ways, but the most likely scenario would involve the city maintaining ownership of the airport but without day-to-day involvement in operations.
“We have to start thinking in bolder ways,” said McCormack. “No one is waiting for us to catch up.”
Pittsburgh inspires
McCormack and Slife were motivated to act after a visit last fall to Pittsburgh, which is in the final stages of building a new airport terminal.
In addition to touring the new space – which is set to open later this year — they had a frank conversation with Pittsburgh airport leaders about the airport’s governance structure.
Twenty-five years ago, Allegheny County turned over operation of Pittsburgh International Airport to a newly created Allegheny County Airport Authority, governed by a nine-member board that is appointed by the Allegheny County executive.
That change led to a more efficient and cost-effective operation, said former county commissioner Bob Cranmer, who was instrumental in advocating for the change.
“The airport was run so poorly,” he said. “It was the old-boss system. It was all about government-created jobs for politicos.”
Cleveland Hopkins officials are in the midst of planning for a new terminal, with a groundbreaking set for later this year or early 2026.
McCormack said a new governance structure would likely make many phases of the new terminal development project easier to accomplish, including hiring and contracts.
Many of the regulations that govern city government are hamstringing the airport’s ability to operate efficiently, McCormack said.
“It takes so long in the city of Cleveland to hire people,” said McCormack, who announced last week that he would not run for re-election later this year. “We lose people all the time.”
He added, “Purchasing and procurement at the airport is a disaster.”
It’s unclear what Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb thinks about the possibility of turning over the reins of the airport to an independent board. In response to several questions about airport governance, a city spokesman, Jorge Ramos Pantoja, said the airport administration was focused on transforming Cleveland Hopkins into “a welcoming, advanced, and efficient transit facility” through the terminal modernization project.
Bryant Francis, director of port control for the city, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Francis, who supervises operations at both Cleveland Hopkins and Burke Lakefront airports, has experience working for numerous airport governance models. He was hired in 2023 from Oakland, California, where the Port of Oakland owns and runs Oakland International Airport.
Retaining public oversight
McCormack said he thinks Cleveland could make the transition without compromising on important community values.
“This can be done without union busting,” said McCormack. “This can be done while preserving public oversight.”
According to Airports Council International—North America, an industry trade group, about 27% of America’s airports are owned and operated by a city, like Cleveland. That percentage jumps to 39% if county and state-controlled airports are included. Another 32% are owned and operated by an airport authority. The rest are a mix of county or state operation or port authority, according to ACI.
Janet Bednarek, a history professor at the University of Dayton who specializes in aviation history, said there has been a gradual evolution toward more independent forms of airport governance in recent decades.
“It takes the airport out of local politics,” she said, adding, “I’m not sure you can take anything out of politics. It takes it out of electoral politics anyway.”
Even so, many of the country’s largest airports – including Atlanta, Chicago and Denver – are governed directly by the cities in which they are located.
Cleveland Hopkins, with an annual budget of about $185 million, employs approximately 415 workers, from maintenance staff to engineers.
Another 5,000-plus work at the airport, employed by airlines, the Transportation Security Administration, restaurants and other entities.
The Cleveland Airport System operates as an enterprise fund within the city, which means that it is a self-funding operation, with no local taxpayer support. The airport is funded almost entirely by a combination of fees paid by airlines and non-aviation revenue including concessions and parking.
In recent years, the airport has come under withering criticism from some travelers, for everything from the state of the restrooms to the limited number of nonstop destinations.
Last year, Cleveland Hopkins ranked last in its size category according to a customer satisfaction survey by J.D. Power.
It’s unclear, exactly, how changing the governance of the airport would improve operations, although the process for hiring workers to clean the restrooms, for example, would likely become less cumbersome, according to some experts.
“I’ve worked with city hall for more than 15 years. It can be very slow,“ said Will Friedman, the former longtime president and CEO of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. ”Their ability to hire people, get companies under contract to do work, get big decisions made can take a long time. Having a governance structure more like the port authority could potentially benefit Cleveland Hopkins.“
The nine-member board that oversees the port authority includes six members appointed by Cleveland and three by Cuyahoga County.
Friedman said he understands why the city might not want to give up direct control of the airport.
“The city doesn’t want to let go of a big asset – I get it,” he said. But the airport is also a big liability – with substantial debt and community-wide pressure to bring in new air service, improve operations and infrastructure.
“If they were to outsource that to an authority, maybe that’s not such a bad thing for the city after all,” he said.
Still, he noted, “The politics of this are not easy.”
Changes discussed before
This isn’t the first time that the topic of airport governance has been discussed by city leaders. Former Mayor Jane Campbell, who led the city from 2002 through 2005, voiced support for the possibility of transferring operation of the airport to a more regional governance model, although the idea never took hold.
Slife noted that he was not necessarily advocating for a more regional approach because the city would still own the airport.
He equated any potential changes to a larger scale version of what has occurred in recent years at the West Side Market, the historic food market that is owned by the city. Last year, the city turned over management of the market to the nonprofit Cleveland Public Market Corporation, a change that officials believe has already yielded positive results.
Bednarek noted that appointed members of airport boards often have expertise in the field. “Whereas an elected city councilperson wouldn’t necessarily have expertise in aviation,” she said.
Slife, a five-year member of council, said he would be willing to give up his oversight role on council to someone more qualified.
“What qualifications do I have to serve on the board of directors of an international airport?” he asked rhetorically. “Is there is someone on the scene that brings a skill set that I don’t have? I’m open to getting that person involved.”
Because the conversations are still in the very early stages, it’s unclear how a hypothetical Cleveland airport authority would be structured and board members appointed.
In Pittsburgh, where the airport is owned by the county, the board members are appointed by the county executive.
The Akron-Canton Airport, which is owned and operated by the Akron-Canton Regional Airport Authority, is governed by an eight-member board of trustees, four of whom are appointed by the Stark County commissioners and the other four by the Summit County executive.
John Glenn Columbus International Airport is also governed by a regional airport authority. Four of its nine board members are appointed by the mayor, with advice and consent of city council; and four are appointed by the Franklin County commissioners; the ninth is appointed by both the mayor and commissioners.
Joe Nardone, the president and CEO of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, said one of the things that attracted him to Columbus was the strength of the board.
“Columbus is one of the best designed airport authorities in the United States,” said Nardone, who previously served as CEO of the Wayne County Airport Authority, which runs Detroit’s international airport.
On the Columbus airport board: leaders from Nationwide, JP Morgan Chase, Jones Day and other prominent central Ohio businesses.
“Our political leaders put the smartest, most talented people on our board,” said Nardone. “Every one of them has significant experience in different areas. When I’m at a board meeting, I’m the dumbest guy in the room.”
Hrishue Mahalaha, executive director of the nonprofit Aerozone Alliance, which advocates for economic development in and around Cleveland Hopkins, organized the trip to Pittsburgh last fall.
He noted that Cleveland and Pittsburgh airports have numerous characteristics in common. Both are former hub airports that have worked to reinvent themselves in recent years to serve their local communities.
“How do we become the best at who we are?” he asked. “There’s no single model that in isolation is the best. Every decision has tradeoffs associated with it.”
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