Airport Commissioner Karin Goulian showed up at a Select Board meeting earlier this month with an unusual request.
Goulian, who along with her husband runs aviation businesses at the Plymouth Municipal Airport, was asking to be named a “special municipal employee” — a designation that would exempther from key sections of the state’s conflict of interest law.
Though she’s voted for years on everything from limiting sewer rate hikes to costly runway improvements, she was now requesting leeway that would essentially let her keep operating businesses directly affected by the decisions she makes as a public official.
The Select Board didn’t take up her Sept. 8 request, which if approved would mean that not only Goulian – but all the other airport commissioners – would get the same exemption.
The board’s approval was unlikely, considering Goulian and her fellow commissioners filed a lawsuit against the town this spring, accusing Town Manager Derek Brindisi of meddling in airport business.
Goulian’s request also followed repeated questioning from the Independent in its months-long investigation of the airport, its operations and its contentious relationship with town leaders.
A review of thousands of available records, along with dozens of interviews, reveals how Goulian’s situation – though not unique – is probably the most striking example on a seven-member commission rife with real and potential conflicts of interest, lax recordkeeping and repeated violations of its own rules.
Four airport commissioners – two current and two who were ousted by the Select Board in June – either hold leases, subleases, or have business dealings directly or indirectly affected by the decisions they have made as public officials.
They have at times voted to lower rate increases recommended by town officials for sewer and land leases. After approving the increases, they have sometimes delayed implementing them for months at a time. They have pushed hard for a controversial runway extension the neighbors adamantly oppose, though commissioners say they have no current plans for that project.
Airport commissioners interviewed for this report insist all these decisions were in the airport’s interest and not their own, or their colleagues’.
In July, also following Independent inquiries, Goulian filed a “disclosure of appearance of a conflict of interest” with the town. She is the only commissioner to do so, records show.
“My desire is to assist the airport and help guide it in its long-term health and standing in the community,” Goulian said in a written statement to the Independent.
“When a vote has arisen that I felt in any way might have any inkling of a conflict of interest with our business, I have abstained from that vote.”
Records show she did abstain from votes where her businesses came before the board for approval of a specific lease, or for permission to renovate, or even get permission to take out a loan.
But she frequently cast votes on more general matters which likely affected her family’s bottom line.
State ethics law bars public officials from using their position for personal gain or acting in a way that makes it appear they are getting special treatment.
It’s a quagmire several other Massachusetts airports surveyed by the Independent have managed to avoid by appointing commissioners with no personal or business interests at the airports they regulate.
The investigation also revealed a troubling lack of documentation on Plymouth airport business. In many cases, required meeting minutes are missing, sometimes years’ worth at a time. Airport officials could provide no records of dozens of hangar subleases at the airport despite their own strict approval and recordkeeping requirements.
Since the town owns the land, anyone with a hangar or a business needs a ground lease to occupy the space. Most hangars at the airport are owned privately, even though the land underneath belongs to the town. Lessees are permitted to lease out part of their space to tenants, but only after the sublets are approved in writing by the commission.
The Independent investigation also found one commissioner, a banker, appeared to help Goulian and her husband get an unusual type of higher-risk loan to renovate their airport business.
Goulian, in response to questions from the Independent, sent a 650-word statement, only briefly touching on the potential conflicts, focusing instead on her commitment to public service.
“Looking at this position as another way to help the local community, I agreed to put my name forward,” she wrote, saying she has “been proudly serving on the commission since 2019.”
“During that time, I feel I have conducted myself in a most honorable way and without malice or bias of any kind,” her statement said.
Goulian and other commissioners say their experience and ties to the aviation industry are a benefit – not a hindrance – to operations at the airport, a sprawling 800-acre campus spanning West Plymouth and parts of Carver since 1934. They all say they are diligent about abstaining from potentially problematic votes.
The Independent’s review found other commissioners do sometimes abstain from specific votes because of perceived conflicts, but the abstentions themselves have little impact on any substantive decisions.
The commissioners almost always vote as a bloc. Not once in more than a decade, according to the available record, did the commission ever vote down a motion once it was made. In fact, there have only been two “no” votes cast since 2014.
Ethics experts interviewed said abstaining from votes does not eliminate any conflict. To comply with the law, the officials would have to either resign from the board or give up whatever is causing the problem – a lease or business at the airport.
“When I became town manager in 2022, I didn’t feel the airport commission had the proper checks and balances in place,” Brindisi told the Independent. “It’s clear there’s a lot of self-interest there, and a lack of transparency.
“The town needs to do an independent audit of the business practices of the commission,” Brindisi said.
A phalanx of airport businesses
The Goulians have operated several businesses at the airport: ACRO Crazy LLC; the flight school, Mike Goulian Aviation; Plane Awesome and Mike Goulian Airshows.
Mike Goulian Airshows, which used to operate out of Hanscom Field in Bedford, is now based in Plymouth. Karin Goulian’s husband, Mike Goulian, is a well-known stunt pilot.
Their businesses include a flight school and an aircraft sales company. Husband and wife are both listed on most corporate records.
At the April 2 meeting earlier this year, she appeared as both a commissioner and a representative of Goulian Aviation. She made a presentation to her colleagues on her company’s “request for approval to construct new offices.”
“Commissioner Goulian said they are building offices inside their hangar to accommodate the people that have been working in the hangar,” the minutes say. “She said the middle bay of the hangar will have 5 offices, with 2 on the first floor and 3 on the second. She said it will not impact airport operations.”
She then stepped back into her role as a commissioner and abstained from the vote, which went in her favor 4-0.
The Independent found numerous examples of votes taken by Goulian and others that likely affected their businesses or leases.
One striking example was a 7-0 vote in 2025 to decrease by half a recommended sewer rate hike for airport tenants.
Town Finance Director Lynne Barrett appeared at their June meeting that year to recommend a 10% rate increase.
“The rates are higher on the town side than what she is recommending for the airport,” the minutes of the meeting said.
Three months later, at the Sept. 4, 2025, meeting, commissioners approved only a 5% rate increase for airport tenants.
Among other current and former commissioners who voted for the smaller increase were Kenneth Fosdick, Douglas Crociati and Peter Conner, all of whom have leases or business interests at the airport, records show.
Conner, who was appointed to the commission in 2025, keeps a plane at the airport and is listed as a manager in a business called J&P Aviation LLC, described in corporate papers as a “small aircraft sales operation.”
His partner in the limited liability company is Joseph Ricci, owner of Yankee Aviation Services – a prominent aircraft maintenance business founded by Conner in 1977 and sold to his business partner Ricci in 2021.
Conner said the new owners allow him to keep a computer terminal in his old offices.
The airport address on state records for J&P Aviation LLC is the same as Yankee Aviation.
Conner, who also has a consulting firm out of his home and works as an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, declined to answer questions about J&P Aviation.
“Why do you ask? Your point?” he wrote in an email to the Independent.
Asked again about the business at the airport, he declined to answer and referred again to the aviation consulting business he runs from his home.
“It certainly seems as though you are on a crusade against the Airport Commissioners,” Conner said in an emailed response to the Independent’s questions. “Shame on you.”
“We have one of the finest airports in the state. Even you should know that,” the email said. “It appears by your writing that you have already decided I have a conflict as a commissioner. Not good on your part.”
“I own my hangar and have no lease on it, simply an agreement that Northeast Aviation will pay the expenses for electric, sprinkler, insurance and land and I will reimburse them,” the email continued.
“I also told you my office is at home. The new owners of my old business have allowed me to have mail sent to their mailbox but most of the important stuff comes to my house as I request. End of story.”
State ethics law allows public officials to keep a lease with the agency they oversee if it predates their appointment. However, officials who feel they may have a conflict are required to file an ethics disclosure within 30 days. Conner did not.
‘People have conspiracy theories’
Fosdick, the longtime commission chair who was replaced by the Select Board in June, has had a plane housed at the airport for almost 20 years. He was a member of the airport commission in 2007 when he first signed his lease.
His $281.54-per-month lease does not indicate how much space he rents – the only lease of more than 70 reviewed by the Independent that does not specify the size of the rented space.
According to records, Fosdick routinely abstained from votes on land-lease rates, but not on other votes like the sewer rates, or grant applications, or runway improvements.
“I’ve read the conflict-of-interest law,” Fosdick said. “Whenever a vote comes up that concerns my interest, I remove myself from the discussion. When they discuss rent, we leave the room.”
Yet, Fosdick has on occasion taken votes that affected his interests, like the time he and his colleagues halved a recommended 10% sewer rate hike.
“There are always people who think there are secret deals, but it’s all public,” he said. “Lots of people have conspiracy theories. I obeyed state ethics and open meeting laws.”
Douglas Crociati, who was also replaced by the Select Board in June, told the board he has kept a personal plane at the airport for decades.
In his 24 years on the commission, he has also repeatedly voted on land-lease rates, sewer rates, runway improvements, and other matters that could affect his expenses at the airport.
In fact, records show the only time Crociati abstained on a substantive vote was when the “Quiet Birdmen”- a secretive fraternity of aviators with such luminary members as Charles Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker – was seeking permission to throw its annual shindig at an airport hangar.
Fosdick also abstained on the Quiet Birdmen vote.
Crociati did not respond to requests for comment.
Missing minutes, lease records
How much Crociati pays in rent for his hangar space and to whom is unclear. The Airport Commission declined to produce his sublease – or any subleases requested repeatedly since April by the Independent.
Every lease signed at the airport includes a clause requiring lessees to have any subleases approved in writing by the commission.
A review of minutes found no records of such approvals dating back to 2015. Without a record of the subleases, it is difficult to know who is renting space there, how much revenue the lessees are collecting and whether they are making a profit by charging tenants more than they owe the commission.
Town Manager Brindisi has been requesting all leases since 2023. Airport managers have promised to provide them but have not yet done so.
Fosdick, who served 27 years on the commission until he left in June, told the Independent the airport doesn’t need the subleases because they know everyone who rents there.
He said the airport’s attitude toward subleases evolved because of its relationship with one major lessee, PAC Trust, owned by Ed Randall.
“About 40 years ago, when my predecessors set up the arrangements with Ed Randall, the philosophy was keep it simple,” Fosdick said.
“We never asked for the subleases because we were in control,” Fosdick said. “If we had an issue, we went to the Randalls.”
But Fosdick and other airport officials appeared surprised when informed by the Independent that one of the airport’s biggest lessees, Pro Airways, filed for bankruptcy a year ago.
Under the terms of Pro Airways’ lease, its bankruptcy could void the contract and the airport could move to take the building, which is assessed by the Town of Carver for $1.9 million.
In addition to the missing subleases, the Airport Commission also failed to produce requested “certificates of insurance” every lessee is required to submit, specific amounts of grants the airport has received from federal and state aviation authorities, and minutes of many commission meetings — including public and closed-door sessions.
The meeting minutes for the entire years 2018 through 2021 are missing entirely from Town Hall archives.
In an interview, the new Airport Commission Chair Paul Worcester defended the recordkeeping at the airport. He said if airport personnel can’t “immediately” get their hands on documents, it’s because they are busy running the airport.
An unusual loan deal
The Independent examination also revealed an entirely different type of business relationship between two commissioners.
In 2025, Commissioner Chris Merrill – a vice president of commercial lending at the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank – signed off on a document tied to a $650,000 loan from his bank to the Goulians to renovate one of their hangars.
In an arrangement known as a “leasehold mortgage on an airport ground lease,” Merrill is a signatory on a public document connected to the loan.
The type of loan is not like an everyday mortgage used to finance a home purchase. Banks are typically reluctant to lend money on a property not owned by the borrower.
Merrill did not return messages seeking details about the transaction, but Goulian addressed it in the ethics disclosure she filed with the town in July.
In it, she said she and her husband got the mortgage from Cape Cod 5 because it is “one of very few regional lenders with experience in building loans on leased land.”
“Neither of my other two local banks, Salem Five Bank and Citizens Bank, who I also do business with, offer airport hangar loans,” she wrote.
“A separate employee of Cape Cod 5 Savings Bank also serves as an appointed member of the Plymouth Airport Commission alongside me,” she continued.
“The fellow commissioner who is employed by Cape Cod 5 Savings Bank participates in commission decisions in his own capacity as an appointed commissioner, independently of his employer.”
Goulian’s ethics disclosure did not address the involvement of Merrill, if any, in securing the loan.
Records show the Goulian lease of the airport hangar was approved at the commission’s Nov. 6, 2025 meeting, and signed on Dec. 1, 2025.
According to records on file with the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds, Merrill signed a document called a ‘Lessor Consent to Leasehold Mortgage on Airport Property.”
He signed the document on Dec. 4, 2025, as the “duly authorized representative of the lender Cape Cod Five Bank and the vice president of commercial lending.”
On the same evening, Merrill voted with his fellow commissioners to approve Goulian’s “consent to mortgage.” Goulian abstained.
Under state ethics law, even the appearance of special treatment among public officials can be problematic.
“Municipal officials are not permitted to self-deal,” said Jeanne Kempthorne, a lawyer and former member of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
“They do not get to profit personally and dole out favors as if a municipal agency were a private fiefdom,” she said. “Members of public commissions and authorities are not permitted to approve leases to themselves or to each other.”
“It’s common sense: foxes should not guard henhouses,” Kempthorne added.
Kempthorne said Merrill’s involvement in the Goulians’ mortgage process could raise questions among federal banking regulators as well as ethics officials.
Worcester, the recently named chair of the Plymouth Airport Commission, rejected Kempthorne’s “interpretation” of the conflict-of-interest laws.
“I am not aware of any conflict of interest,” he said, adding that all board members take a mandatory online ethics course sponsored by the State Ethics Commission.
Conflicts uncommon elsewhere
A survey of several municipal airports found the commissioners are typically from diverse backgrounds with no financial interests at the airport they oversee.
“The airport commission is made up of nine members who do not have any affiliation or interests, directly or indirectly, with any operating firm or lessee at the airport and aviation facilities,” the Beverly Regional Airport Commission declares on its website.
Commissioners at Provincetown Airport include a Lyft official, a lighting designer, a former high school teacher and TSA agent, a housing specialist, and a mechanical engineer who is also a lawyer and private pilot.
In Taunton, the commissioners include a retired police officer, the owner of an electrical company, the co-owner of a bar, a lawyer and a Delta pilot. One commissioner is an appliance repair person who keeps his plane at the airport.
Lawrence airport commissioners include a retired plumbing executive, a retired insurance and real estate executive, a retired postal carrier, a retired police officer, a public housing manager, the director of community relations for a charity, and one pilot at Hanscom Field in Bedford.
Longtime critics of Plymouth Airport include a group of outspoken neighbors convinced commissioners advocating for expansion are plotting to bring in more jets and profits that come with them.
It is an accusation airport officials have long denied.
Lisa Lantagne, a longtime neighbor who moved away from the area after 30 years when she said the noise became too much, said the long-suffering residents deserve better.
“We spent years unsuccessfully trying to work with airport management to address neighbors’ concerns and improve our quality of life,” she said.
Relations between the airport and its neighbors have been bad and getting worse, some residents say.
Over the past few years, they say, planes have become larger and noisier, and the fuel and exhaust stench has become fouler. Their windows rattle as training flights circle above their homes.
They often complain but their complaints, they say, are generally dismissed with disdain.
Relations between the airport and the town are also strained.
The tensions came into focus in the spring when the Airport Commission sued the town, accusing Brindisi of meddling in its business.
What started as a somewhat minor human resources concern — an employee felt her work environment was toxic — blossomed into full-blown litigation.
A Superior Court judge sided preliminarily with the Airport Commission, which argued that under state law, the commission — not the town — controls employment and other decisions at the airport.
The judge ordered the town not to interfere in Airport business until the case is decided.
Filed April 1, the lawsuit appears to have cost Fosdick and Crociati their decades-long seats on the commission. It also likely derailed Goulian’s attempt for an exemption from conflict-of-interest laws.
The Select Board relied on the advice of counsel, who said a board vote on Goulian’s request could potentially violate the judge’s order.
Some town officials have raised the possibility of privatizing the airport or closing all or part of it and offering the land for development.
Brindisi said the town may want to try something new that could save or even make the town money.
“I intend to work with the Select Board to conduct a full analysis of the future use of the airport and its property,” he said.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.
David Kidwell can be reached at david@plymouthindependent.org.