Privatizing Airports Is a No-Brainer
America’s airports may be mostly empty now, but they’re full of hidden potential—if local governments sell them. Yes, sell LAX and LEX and PHX and JAX. Put OKC and OAK on the block with DFW and MDW and more. U.S. cities spent billions building these airports, and although hardly anyone knows it, they’re worth billions more on the open market.
That’s money American cities need. This year, revenues have cascaded out of city coffers because of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. Leaders are scrambling to respond. El Paso shut down its streetcars. Chattanooga backed out of buying a new fire truck. New York City is eyeing 22,000 public-employee layoffs after a long lockdown left the city $9 billion in the hole. Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles, and many more have already furloughed workers and pared back the paychecks of those who remain on the job. In May, the mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi, floated the idea of citywide bankruptcy.
[Read: The other way the coronavirus will ravage our cities]
Selling airfields is hardly a panacea, but some would fetch enough to allow cities to shore up their shaken balance sheets and, in certain cases, address some of the big issues they’ve been kicking down the road—decaying bridges,
