Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s director of ground transportation has resigned her position. Her departure comes about five months after an ethics office sanction against her was upheld after an appeal.
Tracy Harrison oversaw ground transportation operators at the world’s busiest airport, including a contract to handle curbside management.
The city of Atlanta’s ethics office levied a $2,000 fine against Harrison in October 2023 after finding she referred her son for a job at the curbside management contractor MTI Limo and Shuttle Services, a vendor with a contract she oversaw. After an appeal by Harrison, the ethics office upheld the sanction in March 2024.
The ethics office decided on the sanction after an investigation last year.
Less than two weeks before the ethics office issued its original decision on the matter, Harrison’s boss Hughie Galbreath, the senior airport director over parking and ground transportation, wrote a “letter of concern” to Harrison calling for her to make immediate improvements in contract management, operational awareness and other areas of her job.
“Failure to give the necessary attention to these areas will have an adverse impact on your performance reviews and continued employment with the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation,” Galbreath wrote in the letter. The letter was in Harrison’s personnel file, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request.
Harrison resigned last week, on Aug. 13. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Harrison first joined the airport in 2001 as assistant manager of parking and was promoted to become the airport’s director of ground transportation in 2015.
MTI was officially awarded the contract in 2019. Harrison’s son was hired later that year, and MTI in 2022 was awarded a two-year contract renewal under a process managed by Harrison, the ethics office report said.
During the period reviewed by the ethics office, Harrison did not disclose to the city that her son was employed by MTI while she was managing MTI’s contract, in violation of the city’s code of ethics, according to the ethics office.
“There was never a trigger in my mind that there would be an ethical issue,” Harrison said during a February appeal hearing before the Ethics Board.
Harrison said her son’s employment at MTI ended in the summer of 2023. Before that, the ethics office in its report said regardless of Harrison’s intentions, “the vendor sensed pressure or influence” to retain her son for employment.
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