Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Some parking rates at Honolulu Airport were increased today by 33 percent or more although no public hearings were required before the changes.

The monthly rate for airport workers went from $15 to $20 for the monthly rate for the public, from $40 to $60. All-day parking went from $4.50 to $6. The changes do not affect the short-term parking which is charged by the hour.

The increases will produce an additional $2.37 million in revenue, $475,000 annually for the next five years.

In January there were 2,900 employees and 275 other people who paid the monthly fees. There were about 13,000 people who paid the all-day parking rate that month although the average all-day parker bought at least two days in the airport lots and garages.

Those figures are from Gilbert Livingston, Hawaii manager for APCOA Inc., the firm which managed Honolulu airport parking for 29 years until yesterday.

As of yesterday Diamond Parking Inc. took over management of the airport parking facilities. Diamond won the bid by guaranteeing it will pay a minimum of $18.05 million to the state for the next five years. It topped the $16.34 million APCOA was willing to pay for the contract and a $12.35 million bid from Park-A-Lot Inc.

Russell Woo, a state Department of Transportation information officer, said the increases are the result of a study by the department staff. No other rates charged for parking at the airport will go up, at least for a while, he said.

Woo said that when APCOA’s contract was about to expire, the state prepared specifications which said that any bidder would have to agree to raise those three rates.

Unlike other government decisions to raise user fees for example, municipal bus fares or the charges the state levies to rent school auditoriums no public hearings needed to be held.

The difference, Woo explained, is that state law gives the Department of Transportation authority to set airport parking fees without consulting the people who pay them.

The right to manage and profit from managing airport parking is a concession the state sells to private operators, Woo continued.