Some Plymouth Municipal Airport commissioners on Thursday spent the first 15 minutes of their monthly meeting criticizing a published report about their personal interests at the facility they regulate.
It was their first meeting since the Plymouth Independent published an examination of several current and former commissioners’ ownership of hangars or businesses at the airport.
“It’s a hatchet job, pure and simple,” said Thomas Hurley, vice chair of the commission. “It takes routine municipal squabbles, standard board abstentions and town political infighting … and spins them into a grand conspiracy.”
Hurley, who wasn’t mentioned in the report, called it “sheer literary fiction masquerading as an investigative report.”
The Sept. 25 report, headlined “Flying under the radar,” detailed how four current or just-replaced commissioners have financial interests at the airport — either businesses or planes — with leases or subleases.
The report raised questions about whether the intersection of their public offices and their personal interests might run afoul of the state’s conflict-of-interest law.
One commissioner featured in the report was Karin Goulian, who with her husband, Mike Goulian, owns and operates multiple businesses at the airport and holds a lease granted by the Airport Commission in late 2025.
Appearing at the meeting via Zoom, Goulian said the Select Board members who appointed her to the commission in 2019 were fully aware she had financial interests at the airport.
“I want the people of Plymouth to have complete confidence in this commission and me as I take my obligations under the state ethics law very seriously,” she said.
“As the article says, I have always abstained from voting on anything that pertains to my business specifically,” she added.
The report detailed how another commissioner, Chris Merrill, who is also vice president of commercial lending at the Cape Cod Five bank, signed off on a document tied to a $650,000 mortgage his bank gave the Goulians to finance a hangar at the airport.
Merrill did not attend Thursday’s meeting and did not respond to Independent requests for comment before publication of the report.
Goulian said her family got the same interest rate and went through the same process as any other customer. She said the loan was to purchase a portion of a hangar, which records show she and her husband then began renovating.
She reiterated her belief that she has done everything necessary to eliminate any potential conflict of interest.
Another commissioner, Peter Conner, spoke up to detail his interest at the airport, J&P Aviation LLC, which is listed on its 2026 annual report as a “small aircraft sales operation.”
His co-manager of the limited liability company is Joseph Ricci, who owns Yankee Aviation Services. The two entities share an address, according to public records.
Conner had previously declined to discuss the company in email exchanges with the Independent.
“It’s a simple LLC,” Conner said Thursday. “No paid people. We don’t sell airplanes. It made sense to us to leave that address in the airport, where I had registered originally.”
“If you’ve ever filled out an LLC application, they ask you what your purpose is,” he told the commissioners. “And we simply said ‘small aircraft sales.’”
The Independent report also found that at several other airports around the state — surveyed randomly — commissioners have no financial ties to the airports they oversee.
Beverly Regional Airport publishes its policy on its website:
“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 investigation also found lax recordkeeping at the airport and the commission’s failure to follow its own rules.
Though several people, including some current and former airport commissioners, rent space from other lessees, the airport did not produce any sublease documents, which were requested repeatedly starting in April.
Every lease signed at the airport includes a clause requiring that subleases be approved in advance and in writing by the Airport Commission.
Without those records, which are supposed to be public, it’s hard to know who the tenants are and how much rent they pay.
The Airport Commission also failed to produce dozens of meeting minutes, certificates of insurance that every lessee is required to have and documents showing how much grant money the airport has received from federal and state agencies over the years.
At Thursday’s meeting, the commissioners didn’t discuss the alleged recordkeeping lapses but briefly discussed another question raised by the Independent.
Airport officials were unaware until informed by the Independent that one of the airport’s biggest lessees, Pro Airways, had 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 at $1.9 million.
Asked about this at the meeting by a neighbor, someone speaking for the board off camera said bankruptcy is only a problem if the company stops paying its rent.
Pro Airways’ rent this year was approximately $1,700 a month for 70,000 square feet of land, according to the company’s lease.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.