Commission takes care of business friends via airport piñata

Having already given tenants of 244 lucrative Miami International Airport sites 12- to 15-year lease extensions, county commissioners this month put favored firms on a 48-business list to get all additional and vacated airport concessions in the next four years.

That froze out newcomers and existing tenants from high-traffic sites at the airport that are equivalent to holding a share in a goldmine – if you can’t make it there, you can’t make it anywhere (apologies, New Yorkers).

Commissioners didn’t discuss the impact of handing this oligopoly status to 48 businesses or the legislation that created it. They’d already tussled over that in April when they pulled names of business friends from their pockets and tried the giveaway but came up short of the nine votes needed to do it.

The new legislation calls the process competitive, but that’s true only in the sense that friends of commissioners who can face no outside competition for the next four years may contend among themselves over who gets to feast at the airport. No outsiders allowed. These 48 are the chosen ones.

If Miami International Airport concessions were static, the impact of an oligopoly controlling sites wouldn’t matter. 

But the airport is early in a $9 billion upgrade that will add a new Terminal K and its group of concessions, will by policy shuffle the mix of tenants from predominantly retail to mostly food, and will add other spaces for tenants.

All tenants for all those new or altered slots, plus any locations that might open up in a tenant mix shuffle, will now come from the 48-firm “friends of commissioners” list. 

The legislation passed this month says “such concession locations should be filled by firms which had expressed interest in concession opportunities…” Nowhere does it state that those firms must be experienced, qualified, stable or unique. No test was required, no exam was needed to be put on the golden list of 48.

That doesn’t mean that they’ll fail when their number is called in concession bingo. It does mean that any qualified, high-quality tenant with solid finances that isn’t already among the chosen 48 is barred from Miami International Airport during 48 months of expanding airport opportunities.

The legislation, to be fair, is marginally better than the game commissioners tried four months ago when they named specific businesses to receive vacant concession sites without vetting beyond what individual commissioners cared to do with pocket nominees.

“We’re choosing at the last second, without any vetting, any company that we would like to put there?” asked an incredulous Juan Carlos Bermudez, who was taken off guard and had no nominees. The answer was yes.

“If this amendment were to pass, does that mean that the administration is directed to negotiate with those businesses regardless of credentials?” asked Commission Chairman Anthony Rodriguez. That was exactly what the vote was about.

Raquel Regalado then offered a compromise: “Open it up for a certain amount of time. Let people know that this is happening,” she said. “We’re not here to pick winners…. Maybe we should take a moment and have a process that is transparent, that is competitive. Because you can’t say diversity and then exclude competition.”

Needing Ms. Regalado’s vote, sponsor Danielle Cohen Higgins suggested giving her 30 days to add her own names to the list but said the door couldn’t be opened to others “because there’s only so many spaces that we have open and available in the airport right now … so we can’t come up with a list that is 200.” Why, after all, have real competition?

Eventually, the door opened a crack wider. The mayor was allowed to let businesses know they could apply to join the friends of commissioners, who became 48 – but Ms. Cohen Higgins’ new legislation says that’s absolutely all for four more years as those on the goodies list cash in their shares of the airport goldmine. Nobody said a word.

With commissioners’ friends on the list of 48, after all, there was no need to discuss that vote, because the golden goodies in the airport piñata are soon to be dispensed.