Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 Tuesday to approve a plan from its fixed-based operator at John Wayne Airport to sell bonds to finance $120 million in improvements.<\/p>\n
The sale of public bonds is done by a governmental agency, but Clay Lacy Aviation Inc. has a plan to issue the bonds through the California Municipal Finance Authority.<\/p>\n
Supervisors were skeptical of the project when they debated it in August, but board Chairman Doug Chaffee joined Vice Chairwoman Katrina Foley and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento in supporting it on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Supervisor Don Wagner voted no. Supervisor Janet Nguyen abstained.<\/p>\n
Foley said selling the bonds will allow the company to pay for improvements that include new terminal hangars and office space, which will be \u201cowned by the county \u2014 that\u2019s important.\u201d The new facilities will be \u201cleased and operated by Clay Lacy\u201d with \u201cadditional guarantees and indemnification\u201d of the county, Foley added.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of these private equity bonds will utilize taxpayer funds,\u201d Foley said. \u201cThis project will help reduce the rent for the sheriff\u2019s hangar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagner blasted the bond deal, calling it \u201ccrony capitalism at its worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are picking winners and losers and it is simply the case that rich folks will be able to invest in this project and they will get tax benefits from doing so, so taxpayers end up hurt in that those folks are no longer sharing the same tax burden they would otherwise would, and it also opens the flood gates for other deals, which I imagine we will have zero ability to say no to and be consistent,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a principle thing. As a government entity we should not be giving our powers to private entities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarmiento said that, \u201cWhile I agree with a lot of the philosophy that Supervisor Wagner just mentioned, I am not a big believer that big corporate entities that take advantage of public funds at the expense of the public, but to the extent that this doesn\u2019t appear to be that this is something of an investment that is going to be a net benefit to the residents here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarmiento said he liked the deal for \u201cenhancing our assets\u201d that will \u201cremain with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaffee said he liked that the sheriff\u2019s department will get its own building. When it shared officers it placed all of the building under specific security protocols, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 Tuesday to approve a plan from its fixed-based operator at John…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4700,163,165,164,32137,17750,166,171,3230,45781,2086],"class_list":["post-79816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-airport","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-approve","tag-bonds","tag-county","tag-orange","tag-plan","tag-sell","tag-supervisors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}