Airport Parking News

The Commonwealth Court has unanimously upheld a Dau­phin County judge's ruling enforcing the Middletown school district's 10 percent tax on parking at Harrisburg International Airport.

Since its imposition on June 1, 2005, airport officials have claimed that the tax was unfair, even though district officials said they will not require airport officials to collect the tax and have even promised to share it with them.

In a decision written by Judge James Gardner Colins, seven Commonwealth Court judges agreed with Dauphin Common Pleas Judge Law­rence F. Clark Jr. that the dis­trict's 10 percent tax was not unreasonable under the Local Enabling Tax Act.

The court also said that re­quiring airport officials to maintain records of parking taxes collected does "not con­stitute the unlawful regulation of the Authority's business and cannot be characterized as any­thing other than reasonable measures taken to ensure the efficient collection of taxes."

Middletown Area School District Superintendent Audrey L. Utley issued a statement inviting airport officials to work with school officials to find a happy medium.

Both sides have met since Clark issued his decision in June but have not reached an agreement.

"The board believes an amicable resolution is the best course of action," Utley said. "Maybe the Commonwealth Court ruling will help make that happen."

The school district estimates that untaxed parking costs the district between $400,000 and $500,000 a year. The airport collected $4.88 million in parking fees in 2004.

The tax affects parking at the airport, Middletown Area High School, Penn State's Middletown campus, and the Cramer Airport Parking lot. The parking tax does not apply to residential parking.

School officials devised the tax as a way for the 2,400-pupil school district to make up for an estimated $1.5 million in tax revenue lost from acres of non-taxable properties occupied by Penn State Harrisburg and the airport.

Scott Miller, a spokesman for Harrisburg International Airport, said that attorneys for the airport were in the process of going through the opinion "line by line."

"We didn't expect the out­come, but were not surprised by it. We're going to go through it and review the en­tire opinion and, if necessary, we'll appeal it to a higher court," Miller said.

Similar taxes are in effect at airports in Philadel­phia, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley.

Source: PennLive.com

If you travel by air, you know it can get pretty expensive, but now it could get even more costly at Harrisburg International Airport.

Airplanes may not be the only things going up at HIA, the airport recently increased its parking rates.

The airport is already in a court battle with Middletown Area School District which wants to add a 10% tax on the airport's parking revenues, but now Lower Swatara Township says it wants to do the same thing.

The airport says it's already difficult to compete with other airports like BWI and Philadelphia, and raising the parking rate by 20% won't help.

Airport authority officials say they hope all three parties can sit down and reach some type of compromise.

Source: WHPTV