Public Affairs Discussion Group
"The Politics of Airports"
April 8, 2005
Adelbert Hall, Toepfer Room
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
|
|
Robert Clarke Brown
Member of the Board of Directors of
the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and
Capital Markets Advisor at the U.S. Department of
Transportation
|
Dear
Colleagues:
Airports are real stuff. A lot of the news and
political science about politics focuses on symbolism
and arguments about representation and all that. But
whether the local airport is any good is something that
matters to us directly, and its future is of great
concern to the economic interests in any community.
So
airports have politics and that politics matters, even
though the average American Politics course does not say
much about it.
Airports are also a big business, which means they
raise, spend, borrow and invest a whole lot of money.
Their business then becomes part of the politics – and
vice versa.
This
week’s Friday lunch discussion will be led by someone
who has a lot of experience with both the politics and
market side of airports.
Robert Clarke Brown
worked as a senior investment banker in the
transportation finance group at Lehman Brothers, then
managed the public finance department for Key Capital
Markets, before returning to the public sector as a
Capital Markets Advisor at the U.S. Department of
Transportation. He has also been Ohio’s Assistant
Director of Transportation and a Senior Counsel to the
Committee on Government Operations of the U.S. House of
Representatives, among other positions. The result is
that he has a great deal of experience in transportation
policy most generally. But he also is a member,
appointed by President Clinton, of the Board of
Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports
Authority, which operates Washington National and
Washington Dulles Airports. He chairs the Board’s
Strategic Development Committee, and previously chaired
the Board’s Finance Committee as it expanded Dulles
Airport and redesigned that expansion program after
September 11.
So
we’ve asked Bob to come and talk about airports, and the
discussion could cover a lot of ground, depending on
what people want to raise. We will gather on
Friday, April 8,
from 12:30
p.m.to 1:30 p.m.
in the
Toepfer
Room of Adelbert
Hall. Beverages and cookies will be
provided.
Best regards, Joe White
About Our Guest
Robert Clarke Brown, is a consultant and capital markets advisor to the U.S.
Department of Transportation. He was previously the
Managing Director of Public Finance at Key Capital
Markets, the investment banking subsidiary of KeyCorp, a
bank holding company based in Cleveland, Ohio, and a
senior investment banker at Lehman Brothers. He has
served as Ohio’s Assistant Director of Transportation
and as counsel to two Congressional investigating
committees. He has been a member of the Committee on
Finance of the Transportation Research Board and of the
Executive Committee of the Municipal Securities
Divisions of the Bond Market Association.
Spring 2005 Semester Schedule
April 15:
Toepfer Room:
Rob Fischer Ph.D.,
Senior Research Associate at the
Center for Urban Poverty in the Mandel School of Applied
Social Sciences of Case Western Reserve: "Testing
Faith: What do we know about faith-based social
services?."
April 22:
Toepfer Room: Robert Walters Ph.D.,
“Responding to Humanitarian Emergencies – What a
Geologist Learned at the State Department.”
Parking: For
those people who seek to make special arrangements about
parking, the contact person now will be Fay Alexander.
Her phone number is 368-4440, and her e-mail is
fabrienne.alexander@case.edu.
|