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San Francisco International Airpork

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The extra costs of the airport master plan -- now at about $1 billion and rising -- will be passed on to passengers through concession prices and a new "passenger facility charge" that, according to airport staff and public records, the Airport Commission is likely to use as a way to pay off its growing debt load. This tax -- ranging from $4.50 to $18 per round trip -- would be added to airplane ticket prices and generate up to $360 million per year, according to airport spokesperson Ron Wilson. In contrast, the commission has set the airplane landing fees -- paid by the airlines -- at one of the lowest rates in the country.

John Martin, the airport's executive director, has repeatedly and publicly insisted that the master plan is on time; public records show it is years behind the construction schedules as originally contracted. Martin's claim that the original master plan budget is not a billion dollars in the red relies upon redefinitions of the budget itself. In 1996, after the dominant construction contracts had been bid and signed, the airport suddenly revised the official budget from $1.9 billion to a $2.4 billion "baseline," a move that does not eliminate a half-billion-dollar overrun of the original budget. Since then, the airport has siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from capital improvement funds originally intended for other uses into the master plan project. In reality, the master plan expenses long ago used up the revenue bond funds that were to fully finance it.

The president of the Airport Commission, Henry E. Berman, referred all questions about master plan costs and schedules to Martin. The commission's vice president, Larry Mazzola, refused to comment on cost overruns and delays.

But public documents make it clear that, to cover the $1 billion overrun on master plan projects, what was originally designed as an aesthetically grand glass-and-steel terminal building will be chock-full of concession stands. In the words of Rod Stewart -- not the rock star, but the retired air traffic controller who advises Foster City on airport matters -- "John Martin isn't building an airport. He's building a giant shopping mall."

Martin recently authorized payment of $150,000 to a party production company to start planning a "bash" that will celebrate the September opening of the most cost-intensive international terminal in North America.

The dinner party will be open not to the general public, but to people who worked on the master plan and a select group of VIPs. The party's price tag?

One million dollars.

Before change orders, of course.

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