East Hampton Town is looking to settle with the plaintiffs who sued to block its attempt to close the town airport in 2022 and reopen it with restrictions meant to address town residents’ years of complaints, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez announced at a town board work session Tuesday.
To that end, the supervisor said, the town has filed form 7480-1, the Federal Aviation Administration paperwork necessary to keep the East Hampton Airport public, rather than pursuing the “prior-permission” requirement for aviators that it had hoped to initiate. In a lengthy statement, she said the town “has made material progress” in resolving the litigation and has identified “meaningful solutions” to move forward.
The move effectively brings East Hampton Town into procedural compliance with the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act, known as ANCA. Filing form 7480-1 is mandatory when an airport owner wants to either change an airport from a private-use airport to public use, or from public use to a different status. The town had attempted the latter.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Baisley, who has since retired, previously ruled that East Hampton had failed to follow ANCA’s requirements as it sought to change the public airport to a prior-permission required (P.P.R.) model. This was a key component of the plaintiffs’ case against the town.
Justice Baisley in 2023 also held the town in civil contempt for violating a restraining order he had imposed in 2022 that prevented the town from privatizing the airport or imposing flight restrictions. He ordered the town to pay the plaintiffs $250,000, to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys fees for costs associated with the contempt motions, and he imposed a fine of $1,000 per day “for each day it fails to comply with the T.R.O. from the date of this order.”
In March of 2024, however, a panel of the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division agreed with the town that the penalty and fine were improper, writing that the plaintiffs “did not establish actual damages, and, accordingly, to the extent that the Supreme Court imposed monetary sanctions in the sum of $250,000 as a penalty for the [town’s] civil contempt, they may only recover reasonable costs and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, plus a statutory fine in the sum of $250.” Further, the panel wrote that the Supreme Court “should not have imposed a fine against the town in the sum of $1,000 per day,” because the plaintiffs had not requested that and the town was not given sufficient notice that it might be held in contempt.
Now, East Hampton is taking this different approach “in an abundance of caution and to avoid any future contempt proceedings,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. “The filing of this form will not change the nature of current airport operations and will have no practical impact on the airport because the airport has remained open to the public and fully operational throughout the entirety of the litigation.”
“The town continues to assess all available options with respect to the airport and is exploring options for a settlement agreement to resolve the ongoing litigation in a manner that provides reasonable access for aviation users while also providing relief to East Hampton residents,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said.
James Catterson of the firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, the attorney representing East End Hangars (one of the plaintiffs in the case against the town), said in a statement that his plaintiff “welcomes the town’s statement suggesting a meaningful dialogue that would create the grounds for compromise and an end to litigation.”
“We believe the town’s stated position, that it ‘has made material progress in resolving pending state court litigation. . . ,’ reflects a recognition that every previous court decision affirmed by over a dozen different justices of the Supreme Court, has upheld the aviation community’s legal position and that now is the time to meet in conference and conclude a settlement,” Mr. Catterson continued. “With the town’s most recent statement, we hope that an honest, open, and solution-driven dialogue can begin.”
The town has been attempting to address residents’ complaints of excessive noise and environmental impacts at the airport for more than a decade. The Star previously reported that the town’s proposed P.P.R. operations framework was to have addressed about 70 percent of these complaints.
The Coalition to Transform East Hampton Airport, which advocates for its closure, could not be reached for comment by press time yesterday.
The parties are to meet again for a status conference next Thursday before Justice Thomas Whelan of the Suffolk Supreme Court. Further updates are expected after that meeting, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said Tuesday.
