Members of Congress made a huge mistake when they created the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority as a completely independent entity, with absolutely no accountability to taxpayers or their elected representatives. Now that MWAA has been caught with its hands in the cookie jar, Congress must fix this fundamental flaw.

The original idea was to have the president, the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of D.C. appoint 13 supposedly independent board members to oversee the operations of the two federal airports in Virginia that serve the Washington region. Of all people, members of Congress should have known that politics is in play wherever there are political appointees. But they failed to set up any mechanisms to hold these political appointees accountable.