San Diego Union Tribune: Hunter's myopic stance on airport is harmful

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UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Unbelievable

Hunter's myopic stance on airport is harmful

May 11, 2006

San Diego's generations-long struggle to build a new airport has reached a critical turn. Within the next month, the airport commission is expected to recommend, after an exhaustive search, a single site for voters to consider in November. At this pivotal moment, with a glimmer of genuine progress finally in sight after decades of futility, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, has quietly intervened to sabotage the entire effort. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

Without a whisper of warning to the airport commission, Hunter inserted into the 2007 defense authorization bill a sweeping provision that would pre-emptively wipe off the table the three military installations being studied by the airport panel. Without any of these promising sites – Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton, North Island Naval Air Station – San Diego would be left with no viable alternatives and condemned to a chronically overburdened airport and eventual economic stagnation.

Hunter's destructive amendment, which is likely to clear the full House today, prohibits the secretary of the Navy from entering into any agreement for shared civilian-military use of any of the three bases. The provision also bluntly stipulates that the Pentagon shall not “convey any real property ... including any airfield ... for the purpose of permitting the use of the property by civil aircraft.”

In other words, the Pentagon would keep every square inch of its sprawling military bases, allowing no encroachment whatsoever by dreaded “civil aircraft,” until the end of time. It is hard to think of a more myopic position – or one more harmful to San Diego's economic future – than what Hunter is pressing the United States Congress to enact into law. His meddling in this crucial matter is a disservice to San Diegans, underscoring the notion that no man is safe when the legislature is in session.

Hunter says he intruded on San Diego's airport search, put in motion by a 2001 state law, because he thinks it is “a distraction the fighting forces don't need in the middle of a war.” With all due respect to the chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, he is underestimating the caliber of America's troops, who are entirely capable of fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan even as San Diego looks for a new airport.

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