TACOMA — A commission studying sites for Washington’s next potential major airport still could recommend which location it prefers despite passage of a bill this week handing off examination of the state’s aviation future to a new group.
The Commercial Aviation Coordination Commission is planning to meet next month, and any vote is possible, according to commission Chairman Warren Hendrickson.
“They could still pick one of the three greenfield sites,” Hendrickson, a non-voting member, said in an interview Tuesday. “That jury is still out until we have that next meeting.”
Any recommendation would seemingly fall flat. Engrossed Subsitute House Bill 1791, signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday, protects the three finalist greenfield sites under CACC consideration from airport development. There were also clear signals from Inslee this week that a new airport is no longer a top priority to addressing Washington’s projected shortage in flight capacity.
But the CACC is moving forward with fulfilling its statutory mission, according to Hendrickson, after it was created in 2019 by the Legislature and tasked with identifying a preferred site for a new airport. It homed in on three options in or near Graham, Roy and East Olympia in September, setting off a months-long campaign from residents, lawmakers and others to prevent it from singling a choice.
Jake Pool, a lead organizer with the Coalition Against Graham and Eatonville-Roy Airports, said in an interview Tuesday that he worried a recommendation could be used by lawmakers in the future to legitimize a site as a prospective location for a new airport.
“All the signs are saying, ‘You need to stop,’” Pool said, speaking about the commission.
CACC plans to move forward
ESHB 1791, the bill signed Monday, effectively reset the state’s approach to addressing its future aviation needs, creating a new work group to investigate capacity demand in Washington with all state transportation in mind.
The bill shields any greenfield site conflicting with nearby military operations from further exploration — Joint Base Lewis-McChord officials have said each finalist site would do so — and Inslee signaled Monday that contemplation of a new airport should occur only after first launching a full and deeper study of the potential for expanding existing airports.
Most notably, the bill was expected to immediately disband the CACC.
Anti-airport activists wanted the group shelved before a June 15 deadline for the commission to make a site recommendation and file its final report to the state. In one of four sections he vetoed in the bill, Inslee opted not to cut the cord but to essentially allow the commission to naturally expire on June 30.
The group’s final report, Inslee wrote in a veto message, “should reflect the findings of the Commission that they do not have a single site recommendation at this time.”
On Tuesday, Inslee spokesperson Mike Faulk said in an email to The News Tribune that the governor asked the commission to avoid recommending a single site given the outcry from nearby communities.
In an interview Wendesday, Hendrickson said that he had not heard of that request. When asked to address Inslee’s veto message referring to the group’s “findings,” Hendrickson also said it was premature to suggest that the commission had reached any conclusion.
Two voting CACC members reached by The News Tribune on Tuesday said they did not have any insight into Inslee’s request of the group or whether the group had indicated to the governor that it wouldn’t make a final site recommendation. A third referred questions to Hendrickson.
‘Worst thing that could happen’
Hendrickson said the commission was now racing to make up lost time after canceling its meeting earlier this month following the Senate’s passage of ESHB 1791. He said the group nixed that planned session out of respect for lawmakers’ intentions to disband the group.
As it scrambles to put a meeting together — potentially offering an in-person option after exclusively convening virtually — it’s possible that the group makes a recommendation by June 15 but doesn’t file its report until after the deadline, he said.
The group will need to have a quorum in order to take any action, which recent history suggested was not a certainty.
In late March, the commission lacked a quorum necessary to vote on any site and also did not appear to be close to a decision. Hendrickson said that all members, including non-voting ones, had recently been surveyed about their opinions on which site, if any, to recommend. He said results provided some indications of their thinking, but he declined to provide information about what the responses showed prior to learning the final outcome.
The CACC had previously been comprised of 12 voting members. Hendrickson said Wednesday he heard that Inslee recently approved the CACC’s request from February to add two more members. Nine members are needed to constitute a quorum, and nine is also the number of votes needed to pass any recommendation.
As the CACC went from a standstill to full speed ahead this week, Hendrickson acknowledged the difficulty of pulling together a meeting with enough members by June 15.
“For me, personally, it was almost the worst thing that could happen,” he said.
Other vetoes
For Pool and others, ESHB 1791 accomplished what they had been seeking: an assurance that their backyards wouldn’t be targeted for an airport, disrupting quality of life, wildlife and the environment. But Inslee’s vetoes and subsequent statements also caused scrambling to decipher what they meant.
“It was like a roller-coaster,” Pool said.
A section of the bill was vetoed because it said a new work group that would succeed the CACC would review greenfield sites. Inslee indicated that he wanted to renew focus on potentially expanding existing airports, excluding Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, before considering possibly building new airport facilities.
In its own investigation, the commission concluded that expanding existing facilities alone would not fill a projected capacity gap of 27 million annual passengers by 2050.
In an email, Faulk said that Inslee had factored the CACC’s findings into his veto decision-making and into his call for more closely examining the role of existing airports in helping to meet the projected shortfall.
“The governor, like the Legislature, wants the group to continue exploring options at existing airports and do so this time within the broader context of state transportation needs,” he said.
The same bill section also described in detail the function of the new work group. The veto left language in the bill only outlining its membership makeup and the broad task of investigating airport capacity and how best to address aviation demand in Washington.
“Beyond that, the rest of the bill was set aside,” Hendrickson said, adding that funding for the new work group had also been cut.
Pool noted that the bill section also included language that mandated certain impacts that the new work group must consider — including quality of life and environmental — and public outreach it must conduct. Bill proponents had fought for those terms, he said, adding that he hoped they would later be restored.
In an email, Faulk said there were no limitations on what the new work group could take into account.
“There is nothing that prohibits the work group from considering impacts of expanding additional airports on communities, the environment and other impacts the work group deems necessary to include,” he said.
