ESCANABA — The Delta County Board of Commissioners Tuesday voted to have an attorney look into actions at the Delta County Airport, stretching back through the tenure of former Airport Manager Andrea Nummilien. The move comes just two weeks after the current airport manager described the airport as being in “a state of administrative crisis.”

“There’s a lot of things that have been presented — 13 different specific items and I believe strongly that we need to go further in investigating this. There’s things there that we don’t know about and … we need to clarify the situation, that’s going to take deeper investigation,” said Commissioner Bob Barron, Tuesday.

The motion to have County Attorney Scott Graham investigate “airport activity and policy that may have violated local, state or federal law as well as contractual obligation, or any other airport right, duty, of operation,” was put forth by Commission Bob Petersen, who prefaced his motion by saying he had consulted with the county’s legal counsel when drafting the motion.

“I didn’t know how to write this one up, I wanted to make sure it was clear and covered all the bases, so I talked to counsel about this,” he said.

The motion also included language required by state law specifying why Graham would be handling the investigation and not County Prosecutor Lauren Wickman. Specifically, the board felt Wickman, who also represents the county, could not represent the county in this specific case because of the complexities of the legal issues involved, the nature of those issues, and conflicts of interest related to investigating county employees.

Responses were mixed to the motion, with commissioners Steve Viau and John Malnar stating they felt it was important to allow Airport Manager Robert Ranstadler, who took over the airport in October, time to address any issues currently facing the airport before launching an investigation into past practices.

“If files are missing, documents are missing, things weren’t done right, I would like all the facts to be given to the commission first before we hire an attorney to dig into just what he can’t find, or whatever. I really don’t know what we’re trying to do here,” said Viau.

Malnar also objected to Petersen’s suggestion that an investigation only look into airport activities back to 2019, the year Nummilien took over at the airport. Petersen’s motion did not include a timeline for the investigation, but he did indicate that was the time period he wanted investigated.

“You’ve got to go back further than that though, because there’s paperwork from that missing,” said Malnar, who said that he had heard an airport manager hired before Nummilien but sometime after former Airport Manager Kelly Smith had been seen throwing away boxes of federal documents.

The county has had a string of short-term managers since the resignation of Smith, who left the position in early 2018 after 15 years with the airport. In April of 2018, T.J. Reid was hired to fill the position, only to leave later that year. He was replaced by Jeffery Sierpien, whose short tenure included a dispute over mechanical services and a federal civil rights lawsuit being filed against him and the airport. He resigned in 2019 and was replaced by Nummilien, who was hired in 2019 and resigned earlier this year.

Nummilien left the airport on June 2, two days after submitting her resignation letter, which pointed to her mental wellbeing and to the county commission — especially, Board Chair Dave Moyle — as the cause of her departure. She later gave a public statement saying Moyle and Barron had come to the airport when she was on vacation to “find dirt” on her. She also said Moyle had given “legitimacy to a disgusting lie” about a security threat at the airport “that wasted people’s time from the county all the way up to the federal government” through comments made on Facebook.

Nummilien’s departure revealed a number of concerns that Ranstadler spoke about at length during the Dec. 7 commission meeting. Chief among those concerns were documents necessary for Federal Aviation Administration audits that were not properly filed with the FFA — and that may not exist.

“It’s almost like a vacuum of records just having completely disappeared or not being kept up since early 2021,” he said.

The FAA issued Delta County Airport a letter of investigation (LOI) this summer. Ranstadler explained that such a letter is “not indicative of legal action” and is more of a “warning.” Essentially, an LOI identifies problems found — or suspected — during an inspection and requests those issues be rectified. Revocation of the airport’s operating certificate is a possible if regulatory issues are not corrected.

In addition to regulatory failings at the airport, Ranstadler reported missing about $180,000 worth of income that should have been collected over the last three years. It is believed that these funds — collected through a passenger facility charge (PFC) included in ticket prices — have not been collected since November of 2020.

The PFC has become a point of contention. While Ranstadler has publicly stated he is not interested in placing blame and would rather address the issues directly, many, including some in the community, have speculated as to who is responsible for not collecting the PFC and auditing those funds.

Delta County Resident Whitney Maloney spoke during public comment to say that she had reviewed the airport board minutes since 2020 and discovered the PFC had been on the agenda 11 times and that Moyle had been present for two of those discussions as a liaison to the airport board. She went on to say that Moyle made a motion at one of these meetings to use a different company for the PFC audits, as Anderson Tackman & Company PLC was three years behind on the PFC audits.

Moyle responded during his commissioner comments to say he didn’t remember making the motion.

“I don’t remember doing this, but I don’t doubt it. It’s a part of public record. If I made the motion to replace that company it would have been on the suggestion of the airport manager,” he said.

County Administrator Ashleigh Young, who worked for Anderson Tackman & Company at that time, said she looked up the county’s engagement contract with Anderson Tackman for that three-year period. It did not include an audit of the PFC funds.

“Anderson Tackman was actually never contracted with the county to audit the PFC audit and I believe this might be an underlying issue of why they would be delinquent. So, I worked at Anderson Tackman at that time, during those years, and I do not recall being brought up the PFC audits, and we did several different airports, too,” she said.

When it came to a vote on whether or not to proceed with Graham conducting an investigation into the airport activities, the board was split. The motion passed 3-2 with commissioners Moyle, Petersen and Barron supporting the investigation and Viau and Malnar opposing the action.