I-Team: How far Hopkins Airport officials are driving take-home cars

CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found some Hopkins Airport officials driving take-home cars as far as 70 and 80 miles away.

We took a closer look after what we noticed with Hopkins Airport administrators.

Records show, last year, Dina Wilson put more than 39,000 miles on a city car. Records indicate her home is about 70 miles away. Wilson serves as the Hopkins Airport administrator over operations and human Resources.

We also found a former airport fire chief drove a take-home car living about 80 miles away.

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Records also show, last year, current airport fire chief Bill Davis put more than 33,000 miles on a city car.

This all comes to light after a firestorm over Cleveland Department of Public Safety officials driving with kids in city cars.

This week, Cleveland City Councilman Brian Kazy spoke out to the I-Team.

“Definitely, something we need to look into further,” he said.

An airport spokesperson wrote in an email that Wilson needs a take-home car since, “she is an executive at the airport whose role and responsibilities are operational and require her to be on call 24/7 in order to respond to situations that may occur in an Incident Command System/airport environment.”

“I don’t know if I’m convinced getting to and from work is city business whether you’re on 24-7 or not,” Kazy said.

Meanwhile, the I-Team has not finished digging. We’ve requested more records for travels of some airport officials using take-home cars. That includes asking for logs showing when those managers had to respond to the airport after regular hours or on weekends.

We also turned to Councilman Michael Polensek.

“These are public funds,” he said.

An airport spokesperson also wrote in an email, “it is a common misconception that airports are funded with local taxpayer dollars.” They pointed out the airport is funded by fees for airlines and businesses.

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But, the councilman says don’t be fooled. He told us public money pays for airport cars, gas and repairs.

“It’s not in a vacuum. It’s not out in never, never land. The taxpayers ultimately own the airport,” Polensek added.

This week, we’ve also revealed other questions about permission forms granting approval for take-home cars.

The city told us it had no forms granting approval for use of city cars by former Safety Director Karrie Howard or for Assistant Safety Director Jakimah Dye.

The city took 11 months to respond to a request we filed last year concerning Wilson. The city first said it had no approval form. Then, we were told she had approval granted in 2022.

Then, the city produced an approval form for her signed by a department director last March. But, that form was not signed by the city’s chief operating officer showing final approval.

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