(Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect information provided by Jason Wilson and Tara Wicker following the original publication.)
Metro Council members appear poised to engage in some horse trading over the future of the Baton Rouge Metro Airport director.
Two competing resolutions are on the agenda for the Oct. 25 council meeting. One, by council member Barbara Freiberg, would create a committee to conduct a national search for a new director. The other, by councilman Trae Welch, would appoint interim director Ralph Hennessy to the position permanently.
In the midst of the controversy, council member Tara Wicker says she’ll support Welch’s resolution and vote to give the position to Hennessy if her recommendation for an assistant airport director is approved at the same time.
Wicker is recommending Baton Rouge native Jason Wilson for the No. 2 job. He’s a former executive with the Baton Rouge Metro Airport, who worked under Hennessy and former director Anthony Marino. Wilson currently serves as division director for real estate management and development at Miami International Airport.
Wicker says Wilson, whom she knows only professionally from his days at BTR, initially contacted her about his interest in the director’s position. She subsequently raised the possibility of him coming home to take the No. 2 position. Wicker says he’d be a good asset for the airport, and is trying to drum up support for the idea among her fellow council members.
“My thought was how wonderful it would be to get a package deal to get both him and Ralph at the same time,” Wicker says. “Jason was key in many initiatives during his years at BTR, and my thought was after Ralph gets the director’s job you’re going to need an assistant director. If you have good people in place who can move things forward that would be an awesome opportunity so we’re trying to work out a package deal.”
Wicker is not sure how the deal could be structured legislatively. The council could move to hire Wilson through an administrative item, she says. If the deal does not work out, Wicker says she might support Freiberg’s resolution for a national search.
The Metro Council serves as the Airport Authority in East Baton Rouge Parish. The separate Airport Commission is merely an advisory body. The chairman of that commission, Andrew McCandless, recently stepped down amid frustration with the Metro Council’s apparent unwillingness to conduct a national search.
In a telephone interview following the original publication of this story, Wilson denied calling Wicker to express interest in the assistant director position. Asked if he reached out to the councilwoman about the director’s position, Wilson declined comment.
Freiberg says the whole thing stinks, particularly the package deal Wicker is trying to negotiate.
“I don’t like making deals up front like that,” says Freiberg, who is also frustrated that her resolution to conduct a national search was placed below Welch’s resolution on the agenda for the Oct. 25 council meeting. If Welch’s resolution is approved by a majority of the council—and several members have said they will support it—there won’t be a need to take up Freiberg’s resolution.
Freiberg asked the council administrator’s office to place her resolution on the agenda for the Oct. 25 meeting immediately after the council effectively killed an identical measure in late September by failing to take any action on it.
But Council Administrator Casey Cashio says because the resolution died at the September meeting, Freiberg had to create a new resolution for the Oct. 25 agenda—and Welch created his first.
Freiberg says she will continue to push for transparency at the airport and the kind of best practices that should dictate how a public facility is run.
“Maybe Ralph is the best person for the job, but how do we know that if we don’t do a national search?” she asks. “This is a very important position. We did a national search for library director. We did a national search for BREC, and we owe it to our community to see if there might be some other person out there to bring in some fresh ideas.”
—Stephanie Riegel
