Dealing with many of the same pitfalls confronted by other businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Greenbrier County Airport Authority finds itself also answering a lengthy complaint filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by a former employee.
The complaint was filed in May by former Greenbrier Valley Airport manager/director Stephen M. Snyder, who referred to the 20-page document as “only a short list of concerns surrounding Greenbrier County Airport Authority operations.”
GCAA Chairman Deborah Phillips told The Register-Herald that, while gathering documentation requested by the FAA and putting together a response is time-intensive for the facility’s personnel and management, regular operations at the Maxwelton airport have not been compromised.
“We can’t take the next steps on our branding initiative or devote as much time to developing a reopening strategy for the airport’s restaurant as we would like to, but our folks are working hard and maintaining safe operations at the airport,” she said.
Snyder’s complaint centers primarily on alleged infractions by the airport’s previous management team. Those activities occurred before Snyder took over as interim manager in 2015.
Alleged infractions detailed in the complaint included disputes over hangar rentals, medical benefits, land leases, commingling of funds, fuel discounts, overcharging customers and several additional issues that Snyder said were later addressed under his leadership.
He also asserted that former management had shifted nearly $3.3 million in airport funds from local banks into the Royal Bank of Canada and, later, into the Bank of New York. Both of those transfers occurred without GCAA authorization, Snyder alleged.
He made reference to previous investigations into some of his allegations by both the West Virginia State Auditor’s Office (WVSAO) and the FBI.
The FBI’s Charleston office sent a notice to Snyder on Sept. 1, 2017, advising that the agency had closed its investigation because the United States Attorney’s Office “declined to prosecute.” A related property receipt from the FBI showed that Snyder had provided the agency with various bank documents and computers in connection with that investigation.
Likewise, a June 1, 2020, letter that the director of the WVSAO’s Public Integrity & Fraud (PIF) Unit sent to the FAA, with a copy to Greenbrier Valley Airport director Brian Belcher, advised that Snyder had been unable to produce pre-2015 bank and credit card statements required by an investigator from that office. For that reason, substantiating Snyder’s allegations against the former management team “would be unlikely or impossible,” the investigator concluded.
In the end, with the necessary documents unavailable and the airport’s governing body apparently not inclined to pursue the old allegations, the PIF investigator advised a special prosecutor who had been assigned to the case, “We are not actively pursuing any indictments, nor have we claimed to have performed the substantial investigative field work that would allow us to draw any conclusions related to the degree of wrongdoing, if any, related to this matter.”
The letter from the PIF director, Stephen R. Connolly, also revealed that an IRS agent had “examined and identified issues” in the records that had been provided to the FBI, but found that the dollar values of any irregularities did not meet federal thresholds for further action.
In introductory remarks atop his May complaint to the FAA, Snyder also discussed the GCAA’s firing of his wife, who worked at the airport’s restaurant. He additionally claimed a violation of the state’s Open Governmental Proceedings law in regard to his own dismissal a month later.
Snyder also alleged a cover-up by county officials.
“It has come to my attention that in 2019 certain members of GCAA and/or the Greenbrier County Commission have made a direct effort to close the criminal investigation and potentially conceal the alleged wrongdoing,” Snyder wrote to the FAA.
GCAA Chairman Phillips told The Register-Herald that the authority and current airport management are still in the process of responding to the FAA’s request for various documents in response to Snyder’s complaint.
“We fully and completely cooperate with any request from a regulatory agency,” Phillips said. “At the same time, we believe all the issues (in this complaint) have been fully reviewed by other agencies.”
The airport authority’s response to the FAA is due by July 27.
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