{"id":275186,"date":"2026-08-30T11:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T11:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/275186\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T11:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T11:08:12","slug":"our-opinion-search-done-right-increases-excitement-hope-for-airports-future-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/275186\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Opinion: Search done right increases excitement, hope for airport’s future"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the bicounty Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport board voted last week to hire Kim \u201cBill\u201d Hopper as the airport\u2019s next executive director, it brought an end to a search that went exactly as it should have gone.<\/p>\n

It was deliberate and researched.<\/p>\n

It was focused.<\/p>\n

It was a true national search for a qualified, forward-thinking leader whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 leaves little question he can guide a facility that has thrived in recent years to new, wide-open pathways for future growth. The airport\u2019s importance to the region is unquestioned from an economic and travel standpoint, and it should be of considerable comfort and satisfaction for the area\u2019s taxpaying stakeholders that the search was given the type of diligence it deserved.<\/p>\n

\"KimKim \u201cBill\u201d Hopper<\/p>\n

For that, we applaud members of the board for their hard work, their dedication to do everything they could to make a quality hire and for setting an example on how critical hires should be approached by governing bodies throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Around here, we\u2019re too used to the process winding up in ethical disappointment.<\/p>\n

Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak\u2019s interest in the position<\/a> certainly served to complicate the public perception of the search and temper hopes in its early stages.<\/p>\n

In some ways, that\u2019s a real shame.<\/p>\n

After all, Chermak has the same right to pursue a job for which he had a passion as any citizen. And, if he was obviously the most qualified candidate who applied, he should have been the hire.<\/p>\n

That holds true even if he\u2019s an elected official who happens to also be the bicounty board\u2019s chairman, a role from which he rightly took a leave of absence when he was announced as one of the seven finalists for the job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But we worry here, and it\u2019s obvious why. Corruption and cronyism are too much a part of our political heritage. Jobs, all too often, have gone not to the best qualified but to the best connected. No small amount of good people have tried to change that, but the process of gaining public trust in these searches has been slow.<\/p>\n

We tend to expect our leaders will disappoint us when given the opportunity.<\/p>\n

In that sense, it was fair to wonder if the considerable political influence Chermak wielded as the airport board chairman and the lone registered Republican on the Lackawanna County Board of Commissioners would wind up being considered a tie-breaking qualification.<\/p>\n

The board\u2019s unanimous approval of Hopper is evidence that, at least this time, we got the kind of thorough leadership we always insist we want.<\/p>\n

So now, it is time to focus on a bright future for perhaps the region\u2019s most important asset.<\/p>\n

That future now falls on Hopper, a 40-year veteran of aviation management who started his career as an air traffic controller with the Marine Corps in North Carolina. He worked as an airport manager for a multiairport system in New Hampshire for 22 years until 2016, then took a job as director of aviation at Elmira Corning Regional Airport in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Hopper served as the executive director of the Pitt-Greenville Airport in North Carolina, where he worked around challenges presented by the pandemic to lead expansion efforts and build new hangars<\/a>, among other efforts. He\u2019ll bring a degree in aviation management, plus extensive background in managing airport finances and development projects, when he takes over at Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton on Nov. 1 and has agreed to hold the job for at least five years.<\/p>\n

We should be interested to see how much further he can take an airport that has served considerably more passengers and received a cargo jet-load of federal and state funding over the last year or so.<\/p>\n

Hopper is billed as exactly what the airport needs at this point in its history: A steady, experienced hand whose strengths \u2014 leadership, communication, fiscal responsibility and community engagement \u2014 provide the necessary foundation for long-term growth and stability.<\/p>\n

Perhaps his future success will be all the evidence area leaders need to continue prioritizing qualifications during hiring processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the bicounty Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International Airport board voted last week to hire Kim \u201cBill\u201d Hopper as the airport\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9079,1559,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-275186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-editorials","tag-opinion","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}