Officials misused airport parking perk for personal benefit

Some Clark County officials were still getting free parking last year at Harry Reid International Airport for personal use, despite airport officials knowing of previous misuse, new data shows.

The improper use of airport-issued keycards, revealed in 1997 and 2005 Review-Journal stories, was believed to have ended years ago after airport staff whittled the number of cards given out from the hundreds to a dozen. The cards now go only to county employees and law enforcement who regularly have business at the facility.

While recent data shows only three officials misusing the cards, the airport has not regularly tracked potential abuse for more than a decade.

Initially, airport spokeswoman Christine Crews told the Review-Journal that no “records exist that report on the parking facility entries and exits of these individuals.”

But after the newspaper requested a search for deleted data, the agency produced spreadsheets of entrance and exit data for 36 cards issued to departments and current and former employees over a two-year period. The agency, which declined to produce law enforcement cards for alleged security reasons, said there are 12 active cards provided to people who do not work at the airport.

The newly obtained records show Clark County Deputy County Manager Kevin Schiller, Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson and then-Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg repeatedly parked for free on weekends, or when their calendars and vacation logs said they were not on official business.

Schiller and Gibson repaid, combined, nearly $700 in personal parking charges in March after being presented with the data the news organization obtained. Airport staff provided the receipts of the repayments at the Review-Journal’s request.

Fudenberg, who retired in 2020, would have had to pay between about $280 and $830 depending on where he parked if he hadn’t used the county parking card. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Transparency concerns

Airport staff said they stopped pulling monthly use reports that could have identified personal parking sometime after 2005. They were unable to specify when the reports ended.

The “monthly reports cited in the 2005 story you attached are no longer generated,” Crews wrote in a December 2021 email.

Chris Jones, the airport’s chief marketing officer who oversees parking complaints, said it didn’t make financial sense to monitor for abuses after the airport significantly cut the number of parking cards.

“If you look at the ROI of pulling something on a regular basis, it’s just not something that is the best use of our time to be checking on a regular basis when the potential of misuse is so small,” he said. “It’s not like it was 300 people had the cards that they shouldn’t have.”

But Nevada Press Association executive director Richard Karpel said the airport should check for possible misuse.

“The Department of Aviation either looked the other way to allow misuse of the key cards to flourish, or they decided there was no reason to monitor use of the cards,” he said in an email exchange. “But regardless of whether it was malfeasance or misfeasance, the result is the same: poor management practices leading to an unacceptable lack of institutional control.”

Jones concedes that parking is at a premium at the country’s eighth-busiest airport, but said a few potential cases of abuse by officials would not significantly impact availability.

“We need people to realize how busy we are,” he said. “There are (parking) options but your first choice might not be an option.”

Past abuses uncovered

The free parking cards date to Bob Broadbent’s tenure managing the airport in the late 1980s. He provided courtesy parking to a large number of officials, including lawmakers, other elected officials, religious leaders, gaming executives and minor-league baseball employees. In the 2005 story, the reporting revealed the cardholders misused free parking at an estimated cost of more than $60,000.

Airport parking has been a problem for years with flyers complaining that they couldn’t find spots in the older Terminal 1 garage or having to take shuttles from Terminal 3 or economy parking lots.

Long-term parking costs have risen from $12 a day in 2005 to $18 a day in both Terminal 1 and 3, according to the airport website. Economy parking is $12 a day; it was $6 in 2005. The airport has about 15,000 parking spots available to the public but is looking to add additional public parking that is now used by employees.

The airport projects that parking will bring in $123 million in the 2022 fiscal year — about $32.7 million more than the maintenance costs for the garage and lots, records show. The excess will be used to operate and maintain the airfield and terminal.

Linda Jablon, 72, who was a Las Vegas resident for 43 years before moving to Reno last year, emailed the airport in 2020 to complain about parking.

She said it was “appalling” that officials misuse the perk and said the airport’s parking system is a burden for older people and the handicapped who have to use shuttles or park far from the terminal.

“I think it’s awful but it’s always been that way,” she said.

Vacation and holiday parking

Jones said the current parking computer system, installed more than a decade ago, keeps only about 800 days of data. To obtain a keycard, the employee has to sign a disclosure that says the card can be used only for official business.

The newly obtained records showed Fudenberg, Schiller and Gibson repeatedly parked for free on weekends or when calendars and vacation logs showed they were not on government business.

Schiller paid the airport $432 for a dozen instances of personal parking between November 2019 and last November, including parking on Thanksgiving and other days off, records show.

He did not respond to calls, emails and a request for comment through county spokesman Dan Kulin.

“There were times he used the card for dates that did not coincide with work travel, and in those circumstances, he reimbursed the airport for the parking fee,” Kulin wrote in a statement.

Gibson paid back $255 for three instances of personal parking, records show.

Gibson said he assumed the airport would send him quarterly reports so he could pay for his personal parking, but the issue fell through the cracks until he saw the records requests. He asked that the airport send him quarterly reports of his usage going forward so he can reimburse the agency for personal parking.

“This is important,” he said in a phone interview. “The money isn’t what matters. I want to be trustworthy. I think I am trustworthy. I wish it had been different. I wish I took care of it earlier. It’s not going to happen again.”

Jones confirmed that the airport again is pulling reports at Gibson’s request.

Former coroner gets more perks

The most frequent apparent misuse of the keycards was by Fudenberg, who has been the subject of several Review-Journal investigations into questionable conduct while in office.

Fudenberg logged more than 23 days’ worth of parking in just three months between October and December 2019 when his calendar or vacation logs showed he was not on official business.

There were nine days where he took a vacation and his calendar noted he was in Bahrain; four days when his calendar showed he was traveling with his girlfriend to Tampa, Florida; and another four days when he took vacation time without noting where he was going.

On Dec. 14, 2019, a Saturday, his calendar notes that his girlfriend was arriving at the airport at 4:30 p.m. Keycard data shows him driving into the garage at 4:42 p.m. and leaving 28 minutes later.

The airport has not reached out to Fudenberg to reimburse the agency for the parking and aviation officials could not find his signed parking card agreement, Jones said.

Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com and follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.