Who runs T.F. Green?
A small, interlocked circle controls the Rhode Island Airport Corporation — and when its own workers strike for a living wage, it says it’s powerless, even as it lends their employer $9.7 million. This is the map, the money, and the timeline.
An insider circle, and how it holds together
Governor McKee appoints and reappoints every member of the board; no seat belongs to Warwick or any other local body. The chair is a longtime campaign donor to the Governor, and the Governor selected the chair’s law firm as outside counsel in the state’s Washington Bridge litigation. The board sets the CEO’s pay and has awarded him a full performance bonus every year since 2021.
Where the money moves
The chair makes political donations to the Governor; the Governor selected the chair’s law firm for potentially lucrative work on the Washington Bridge litigation; the airport bankrolls the low-wage employer; and the CEO is paid top-of-region through years of documented labor conflict.
The club that runs T.F. Green
Seven seats, every one of them the Governor’s appointment. No seat belongs to Warwick, the host city. Members serve for a decade and longer. The one seat contemplated for labor belongs to the building trades — not to the hospitality and service workers the airport runs on. And the public may not speak at meetings.
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Who sits on the board
Seven directors, all gubernatorial appointees. Biography, tenure, and who appointed them — nothing here asserts a private financial interest in airport business except where it is documented.
Partner at Savage Law Partners, where he chairs the Corporate and Business and Public Sector/Governmental Services departments. His former firm served as RIAC’s corporate counsel. He has recused himself twelve times across ten meetings on matters involving his own firm’s clients. He has given Governor McKee $12,750 across fourteen contributions since 2014, and the Governor selected his firm as outside counsel in the Washington Bridge litigation.
The board’s longest-serving member holds the seat contemplated for organized labor under state law. It is filled by a building-trades official — not by anyone representing the hospitality and service workers who staff the airport.
Reappointed in 2024. Former Chief Financial Officer of Hasbro; also a director of Samsonite and Logitech.
A 35-year Dunkin’ franchise executive.
A career construction-litigation attorney whose firm merged into Pierce Atwood.
Gregory Pizzuti, roughly 10 years on the board, an IBM sales executive. Jeffrey Bogosian, a brokerage branch manager.
And the CEO the board employs
Total compensation of $785,468 in 2023 — second among Rhode Island public earners when quasi-public employees are counted — with a full 20% performance bonus every year from 2021 through 2025, including through the January 2025 no-confidence vote by the airport’s police officers and firefighters.
Key events, 2020–2026
Dated entries, each with its sources.
JetBlue, United, Delta and Air Canada, plus IGT and Hertz, as reported in his own Rhode Island Ethics Commission disclosures. Ahmad has said he had no advance knowledge. No investigation followed and no finding was ever made.
The board rates Ahmad exemplary and pays the full bonus in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Savage Law Partners is retained as outside counsel for the State, working under the Attorney General’s direction, alongside Wistow, Sheehan & Loveley. The firm remains on the case after co-counsel withdraws in November 2024.
Legislation to give the host city’s mayor one of the seven appointments fails; every seat remains the Governor’s.
Eleven days after his re-election, on a contested allegation the union calls a pretext. Council 94 filed an unfair labor practice charge.
RIAC is “Lender,” the workers’ employer is “Borrower.” The lease is extended to 2038. No wage condition is attached.
Citing a hostile workplace and bargaining conduct. RIAC’s spokesman calls the vote “pure theater.”
Filed in Providence County Superior Court ahead of arbitration.
Chair Savage presides over the special meeting, at which no verbal public comment is permitted. Under the new vendor, monthly janitorial hours fall from about 4,600 to 2,700 and workers lose health coverage.
The growth headline is self-authored by the CEO in a trade publication; the award is a reader survey.
Near-minimum wage, no raise in roughly two years. RIAC says it cannot affect their contract — while holding a $6.86M note over their employer.
RIAC votes to increase its lending to the concession operator, up from $6,856,262. Minutes pending.
“Fastest-growing” — measured honestly
The fair test is pre-COVID to now. Between 2019 and 2024, T.F. Green went from 3,989,925 passengers to 4,011,681 — a gain of about half a percent — while national air travel grew roughly 6.6% to a record 904 million screened passengers. It did not lead the nation. It lagged it.
What the workers say
The board rewards the CEO; the workforce keeps filing charges.
Documents and sources
Every exhibit below is a primary record held by Local 26. Links open the file directly.