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Texas House Speaker James E. 'Pete' Laney named AOPA's annual Hartranft Award winner
 Pete Laney |
Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives James E. "Pete" Laney was awarded the 2001 Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Hartranft Award for his heroic efforts to preserve general aviation in central Texas. He will accept the honor Saturday, November 10, at AOPA Expo, this year held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
AOPA's Hartranft Award is presented annually to the political leader who makes the previous year's greatest contribution to the advancement of general aviation. It is named for J.B. "Doc" Hartranft, AOPA's first employee and president of the association for nearly 38 years.
Laney is the twenty-fourth recipient of the prestigious award, joining past winners that include U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), and former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-Kan.).
Speaker Laney, a 35-year AOPA member and longtime pilot, recognized early the potential problems with a city of Austin plan to redevelop the former Bergstrom Air Force Base as that city's primary airport. As early as 1997, Laney proposed a plan to have Austin's then-primary airport, Robert Mueller Airport, acquired by the state of Texas and operated as a general aviation airport. In 1999, legislation to accomplish that was passed by both houses of the Texas legislature but died in a legislative conference committee.
Austin's Bergstrom redevelopment plan called for closing Mueller Airport, which was home to about 350 general aviation aircraft. In the conversion planning process, Austin city officials promised equal or better facilities at Bergstrom would be provided for the general aviation aircraft displaced from Mueller.
They weren't.
Austin city officials also announced their intention to purchase nearby Austin Executive Airport, already home to more than 250 general aviation aircraft, and turn it into the primary GA airport for central Texas. But on at least two occasions after that announcement, when the property was offered for sale, city officials failed to buy it. Eventually, Austin Executive Airport was purchased by expanding local computer giant Dell Computers and closed.
By late 1999, with both Mueller Airport and Austin Executive Airport closed, more than 600 general aviation aircraft were left homeless and the Austin area bereft of a general aviation airport. AOPA President Phil Boyer, conducting a Pilot Town Meeting in central Texas in the late 1990s, saw firsthand the plight of pilots in the region.
"Pilots and aircraft owners, grown men and women, came up to me with tears in their eyes," said Boyer. "They told me they were being forced to sell their airplanes because the closest affordable tiedown was 40 miles away," said Boyer.
Speaker Laney, working closely with Texas Representative Ron Wilson and Senator Ken Armbrister, in March 2001 engineered H.B.2522, which requires that the Texas Department of Transportation "establish a state airport in Central Texas that is open to the general public."
Despite fierce opposition from Austin city officials, the bill passed in May and was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry on June 15, 2001.
The AOPA Hartranft Award is one of the pilot association's two highest awards of the year. The honoree is selected by vote of the AOPA Board of Trustees, as is the annual AOPA Sharples Award, which for 2001 goes to New England airport activist Robert G. "Bob" Walton.
01-4-064
November 10, 2001
