Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson is another one of those Republicans who’s always talking about how government shouldn’t meddle in private business. But here he’s meddling in local fees at the airport in behalf of helping out a private airport parking company (which so happens to be owned by a prominent Republican family.)
This is all about competition, Hutchinson says, in trying to prevent charging of fees for airport access to the private lot operator that aren’t charged to cabs and others. That friend should be eternally grateful for the explosive price increases Ron Mathieu and Co. have placed on airport parking — in the face of declining demand — a price rise that I’ll bet the private competitor has followed, double-digit increase by double-digit increase. With a long-established piece of property, those increases should have benefitted the operator handsomely.