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Taoyuan commissioner defends airport zone bill

Taoyuan County Commissioner Chu Li-lun (朱立倫) lashed out at government officials and the press yesterday for opposing the “Taoyuan Airport City” bill.

“The Executive Yuan gets to decide on the boundary of the Airport Special Zone and its development,” he said. “Any unilateral interpretation [of the proposal] will stigmatize it.”

“The press does not do its homework, and government officials do not read the laws closely,” he said.

Chu said the entire nation would benefit from the airport development and that Taoyuan County helped draft the proposal.

Taiwan would not be the first country to have an independent administrative institution managing an airport, he said. However, people seem to interpret the measure as a scheme for benefitting certain corporations.

Chu also denied that government officials received the draft of the bill only two days before the preliminary review on Monday. He said Taoyuan County had held many seminars concerning the bill and had been preparing for it for two years.

Government officials, however, continued to express doubt over the bill.

A Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) official, who wished to remain anonymous, said much deliberation over the bill was expected.

“The chairman of the airport zone will enjoy tremendous power, like a Chinese emperor,” he said.

“What will be left for the Taoyuan County Government to manage? Perhaps farmland and Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) mausoleum,” he said.

He said the airport zone was not the key to making Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport competitive.

“They could let private corporations manage the airport terminals in the form of OT [operate-transfer] or BOT [build-operate-transfer] projects,” he said. “The Civil Aeronautics Administration is still the administrative authority in charge of airport land use and flight safety.”

At a separate setting, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) acting secretary-general Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) yesterday urged the DPP caucus to complete the review of the remaining articles of the bill.

The legislature’s Transportation Committee passed the first reading of 55 of the bill’s 63 articles on Tuesday despite unresolved controversies.

Hsieh urged the DPP caucus to give “professional opinions” regarding the bill instead of simply blocking the articles because it would like to boycott president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign platform.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry’s Department of Taxation yesterday expressed its opposition to the bill.

Preferable tax rates for the zone’s developers would negatively affect the nation’s taxation system by giving them an unfair advantage over other businesses, the agency said in a statement yesterday.

“At this point, it is inappropriate to cut tax rates for businesses in any special zones,” it said. “Otherwise, businesses in other industrial parks will ask for the same taxation terms.”

Additional reporting by Joyce Huang and Flora Wang
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