The cities of Los Angeles and Ontario have been at odds over control of the airport after years of declining passenger volume.
Advertisement
Los Angeles will transfer ownership of L.A./Ontario global Airport to an airport authority made up of representatives from San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, sources said Wednesday. “We would therefore oppose any potential agreement between the Los Angeles World Airports and TNCs that does not incorporate a regulatory framework substantially similar to the one imposed on taxi companies”.
Officials in both cities declined to comment prior to the planned 1 p.m. Thursday news conference in Ontario by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Ontario Mayor Pro Tem Alan Wapner.
The agreement takes a complicated issue off the table for Deborah Ale Flint, the new executive director of Los Angeles World Airports. The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote at a later time.
The Los Angeles Airport Commission is scheduled to meet in closed session this morning beginning at 8 a.m. and is expected to discuss the terms of any agreement to shift ownership of Ontario airport. Supporters of app-based services say apps make calling a vehicle and paying for a ride much easier than hailing a taxi.
“We are not trying to make money out of the airport but the dollars taken out of LAX to do things at Ontario as well as the existing debt would need to be assumed by them”, Garcetti told this publication after a transportation meeting in Claremont in July 2014.
Now the L.A. City Council is saying “not so fast”.
Inland Empire officials had been seeking to regain control of ONT, blaming mismanagement by LAWA for declines in passenger traffic and flights.
The deal reverses a 30-year-old acquisition and marks a retreat from the vision of Los Angeles’ airport agency as an ascending, regionwide air travel powerhouse with major branch operations in the Inland Empire and Palmdale.
The plaintiffs alleged breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty against LAWA, which maintained there was no evidence of a failure to faithfully manage the facility.
For the past two years, the two cities had been tied up in legal proceeding pertaining to the lawsuit.
The tentative agreement with Ontario calls for LAWA to be reimbursed for its investments in the facility, job protection for the facility’s 182 employees and the settlement of a lawsuit by Ontario against Los Angeles, The Times reported.
Ontario officials claimed that price tag was at least $181 million too high. LAWA set a sale price of $474 million for ONT, almost double the $250 million Ontario offered.
Advertisement
In April, a judge in Riverside rejected a motion by the city of Los Angeles to have Ontario’s lawsuit dismissed.
