Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority members in a dogfight

An internal power struggle on the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority has caused one member to resign, while others jockey for position just days before the board is slated to pick new officers.

At the heart of the turbulence was a palace coup of sorts in which longtime member David Haines had quietly decided to challenge Chairman Marc Troutman's bid for another year in the chairman's seat.

As Haines worked behind the scenes in recent weeks to gather enough votes on the 15-member board to overthrow Troutman, some board members brought in an outside attorney to investigate whether Haines and others have conflicts of interest.

Haines, a former two-year board chairman, abruptly resigned in disgust. Troutman, who did not return phone messages Monday, again appears to be unopposed for Wednesday's vote, and a board that's spent the past three years trying to stabilize its finances now has division within its ranks.

"I resigned because there is a lack of integrity shown by some members of [the board]," said Haines, of Forks Township, a board member since 2009. "I have the utmost respect for most of the board members, but there are some who I simply choose not to be near any longer."

Lehigh Valley International Airport is a $22 million-a-year operation that handles nearly 60,000 passengers per month, in addition to the nearly 200 small-plane pilots who fly out of LVIA and its smaller siblings, Queen City and Braden airports.

It's all run by the part-time board, whose decisions dictate everything from airport parking rates to how much pilots pay to keep their planes there to how much major airlines spend for fuel and landing fees.

Despite being an unpaid position that can require members to attend several meetings per month, airport authority seats are sought-after political plums given by Lehigh and Northampton county executives to some of the Valley's most-connected figures.

Most recently, the authority has been trying to deal with a difficult aviation market that has decreased annual passengers to roughly 700,000, while struggling to pay off a $26 million court judgment against the authority for taking a developer's land in the 1990s.

A rift that had been building for months came to a head last week as Haines was preparing to challenge Troutman's bid for a second year as chairman. That's when Jane Baker, a longtime board member and member of the authority's nominating committee, revealed that an outside attorney had been brought in to investigate several board members' potential conflicts of interest, according to board member Dean Browning.

Browning identified those members as Haines, because he is a major-airline commercial pilot who flies out of LVIA; Ed Pawlowski, because he's mayor of Allentown where Queen City Airport is located; Robert Berger, because he's a small-plane pilot who flies from Queen City; and Browning himself, because he's chief financial officer for LVIA's largest private tenant, New World Aviation.

Authority Executive Director Charles Everett confirmed that Haines had resigned but declined to discuss the outside attorney or an 11-page report delivered by an attorney with Hiscock & Barclay of Albany, N.Y. Everett declined to say how much the outside attorneys was paid, or even if a report exists.

"It's a legal and personnel matter that I am not at liberty to discuss," Everett said.

Baker also declined to comment on who hired the outside attorneys or how, or even if, they were paid.

"I think it's important that this board progress properly," said Baker, a former state legislator and Lehigh County executive. "That's as much as I'll say right now."

Browning would not produce the outside attorney's report, but said it essentially opined that he was the only one of the four with a conflict of interest — an opinion he said is not supported by authority board solicitor Robert Donchez Jr.

"I'm absolutely not going to resign," Browning said. "I'm here to focus on stabilizing our finances, reinvesting in the airport and marketing it so that it can be much more successful than it is now."

Donchez declined to comment.

Haines said he resigned before knowing the report's decision that he did not have a conflict of interest, largely because it didn't matter. What mattered, he said, was that other board members brought in attorneys to investigate whether his involvement on the board was a conflict with his job, without ever discussing it with him.

"I'm disgusted by this behavior and cannot, in good conscience, continue to serve on this board of governors," he said.

Pawlowski has no intention of giving up his seat, but he has some advice for some of his colleagues.

"We need to stop all this bickering and focus on attracting more airlines to this airport," Pawlowski said. "This constant fight for control is getting us nowhere. All of our efforts should be on the fiscal stability of this airport."

It sets up a potentially explosive special meeting Wednesday in which the authority board will choose new officers, discuss its debt and update news on its land sale.

"Quite frankly, all this is just silly," Pawlowski said of the power struggle. "I would hope we can find more constructive things to do than bicker with each other."