A Helena city commissioner on Wednesday questioned the ability of the Helena Regional Airport Authority to lease property to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana for a new office building, since the airport’s bylaws were never approved by the city commission.

A memo to the commission from City Attorney David Nielsen notes that while the airport board adopted its rules for leasing or selling property in 2003, those rules were never approved by the city commission, a requirement under state law. It is yet unclear whether the Lewis and Clark County Commission ever approved the bylaws of the airport authority. The authority is appointed and overseen by both the city and the county.

“Those rules needed to be adopted (by the city), and they have not been adopted,” City Commissioner Alan Peura said. “I would assume the airport board lacks the authority to act upon this letter of intent, because (its rules) haven’t been approved by the city commission.”

While hesitant to say for sure without doing more research, Nielsen acknowledged that “it is a possible interpretation, there may be a lack of authority.”

The lack of approval from the governing bodies could call into question not only the letter of agreement signed last month between the airport and Blue Cross for 9 acres for a new office building for the insurer, but Peura wondered what it might mean for the legality of several existing airport leases with other private tenants inked in recent years, including Costco and the Independent Record.

“That’s my hesitancy — this has been going on for quite a few years,” Nielsen said. Peura shared with the commission at Wednesday’s work session a three-page memo regarding his concerns with the airport board and several proposed actions in the aftermath of the deal with Blue Cross.

“The airport said they would never move forward with a decision of this magnitude without discussing it with the commission, and they did move forward, they did not discuss it,” he said.

His requests included an audit of the airport board and its compliance with open meeting laws; an interim zoning overlay to change any airport land currently zoned for business back to airport zoning, “essentially freezing any additional development in that area,” he said, until a review of the airport board, traffic, public transit and the growth policy can be completed; and a report that “analyzes the impacts in the Helena area of public land being used to subsidize private business development in competition with private land development.”

Other commissioners and city officials, though, weren’t keen to immediately devote extensive personnel and financial resources to all of Peura’s questions at the expense of existing projects.

“I’m not prepared to commit myself (to these requests),” Mayor Jim Smith said.

Peura also asked that the airport board start sharing its meeting minutes and other official documents with the city as a matter of course.

“I understand that’s already in place under the airport authority charter, but that it’s not taking place,” Peura said.

Alan Nicholson, developer of the Great Northern Town Center, attended the work session and told the commission that the taxable value of land in the Great Northern is 10 times the taxable value of Costco’s land and 17 times the taxable value of the Independent Record’s lot. He questioned whether allowing so much development on public land is appropriate.

“It should be embarrassing to Blue Cross to do this and say it’s the most economic thing they can do,” he said. “It’s only the most economic thing they can do because they’re getting a subsidy from the public, and that isn’t right.”

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com.