Airport paradox?

For months Charlotte's public officials repeated their mantra about the city's airport: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Republican legislators ignored that in transferring airport control from the city first to an authority and then to a commission. The matter is currently in court.

The city has argued all along that the airport has thrived under its control.

So City Manager Ron Carlee couldn't help taking a swipe at comments made in Saturday's Observer by former aviation director Jerry Orr and former Mayor Richard Vinroot, now attorney for the proposed commission. 

"Good Morning!" Carlee said in an email to council members. "Mr. Orr's comments in today's Observer are priceless regarding the audits and studies that we are doing -- if contradiction doesn't get you, paradox will."

The story, which dealt with the city's current audits of the airport, quoted Orr saying, "It seems to me that Charlotte is a model, not one in need of being fixed."

"It looks like a solution in search of a problem," he said of the audits. "That's what I think."

Carlee also cited a quote from Vinroot. "I wonder if they aren't trying to find something wrong with this spectacular successful airport," he said.

Vinroots pledge $1 million for UNC

Former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot and his wife Judy have pledged $1 million to UNC Chapel Hill's School of Government to honor of his friend and former law partner, Bob Bradshaw Jr.

The university announced the gift this afternoon. It's the largest gift ever to the School of Government.

"Judy and Richard Vinroot have shown extraordinary generosity and thoughtfulness in creating this new professorship and fellowship," Mike Smith, the school's dean said in a statement.

Bradshaw, now retired, was a GOP leader in Mecklenburg County who went on to become chairman of the state party. Vinroot, one of his proteges, served two terms as mayor and ran for governor.

Of the money, $666,000 will be matched by a state fund to create the $1 million Robert W. Bradshaw Jr. Distinguished Professorship. Another $334,000 will establish the Robert W. Bradshaw Jr. Public Administration Fellowship.

"Bob Bradshaw spent many years encouraging good people to enter public service, and then mentoring them once they did so," Vinroot said in a statement. "Wonderful examples of this are former Gov. Jim Martin and 9th District Congressman Alex McMillan, both of whom are among Bob's protégés.

"I'm most grateful for what Bob did for me personally, but more so for what he's done for everyone in North Carolina throughout his professional life. Accordingly, Judy and I can think of no better way to honor Bob than at the School of Government, where public service is the essence of their mission."

Vinroot in Tiananmen: Witness to history 20 years ago

Richard Vinroot had just been in China a few hours that June night in 1989 when he and two friends found themselves in a Tiananmen Square roiling with 200,000 pro-democracy protesters.

Not far away, protesters attacked a soldier atop an armored personnel carrier as he tried to shout through a megaphone. They beat him, then set him on fire.

“Right after that, I remember shots being fired over the crowd,” Vinroot recalls. “I realized I was in a county that was about to have a revolution.”

Then a Charlotte City Council member, Vinroot had just arrived with a delegation for a Sister City visit to Baoding. For a nerve-wracking week, they became not just tourists but witnesses to history.

For more, see Friday's Observer.

Nine years after bitter campaign, Vinroot working with Easley's son

In 2000, Democrat Mike Easley beat Republican Richard Vinroot in a rough and tumble gubernatorial campaign. They've rarely spoken or even seen each other in the years since.

But now Easley's son, Michael Jr., is working with his father's erstwhile rival at Vinroot's Charlotte law firm. The younger Easley, a law student at the University of North Carolina, is one of a handful of summer clerks at Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson.

He and Vinroot have hit it off, going to lunch at places such as the Diamond. Vinroot and his wife Judy have even talked about inviting Easley and other clerks to their home for dinner.

"He's a nice young man and his parents are nice people," Vinroot says. "I just happen to have a different political philosophy and we happened to bump into each other running for governor. He won and I lost."

Vinroot didn't want to comment on the Easleys' legal troubles. A federal grand jury in Raleigh is looking into free air trips the former governor took. Prosecutors have also interviewed the Fayetteville car dealer who loaned a 2000 GMC Yukon that was driven by Michael Jr.