JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – A state representative says a bill passed 10 years ago to take over Jackson’s international airport was the state’s effort to whitewash it.

On Wednesday, Rep. Robert Johnson testified in U.S. District Court about the passage of S.B. 2162, more commonly referred to as the airport takeover bill.

“The governor at the time was Phil Byrant, and you know all his appointments were going to be white. The lieutenant governor was Tate Reeves, and you know his appointments were going to be white,” he said. “We knew that because up to that point, everyone they had appointed had been white.”

S.B. 2162 would replace the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority (JMAA) with a new Jackson Metro Area Airport Authority (JMAAA).

The new board would have nine members, with only two appointed by the city of Jackson, two appointed by the governor and one appointed by the lieutenant governor.

The current JMAA board has five members, all of whom are appointed by the Jackson mayor and confirmed by the Jackson City Council.

Johnson offered at least two amendments to the bill, both of which were voted down. One would have required five of the nine members to be Black.

He told the court that one Republican lawmaker said the state didn’t want to go down that road.

The bill also would require JMAAA appointments to have qualifications that would prevent Black people from being appointed to the board, such as requirements for the commissioners to have a pilot’s license or an engineering degree.

“What I saw 2162 doing was taking the Jackson municipal airport and whitewashing it,” he said.

[READ: Jackson Mayor on airport takeover: ‘Race has a lot to do with it’]

Johnson was elected to the Mississippi Senate in 1992 and served until 2003 when he was defeated in his bid for re-election. The following year, he was elected to the House of Representatives and has served there since.

He said since being elected, his service has been “replete with examples” of how state leaders have overlooked Black communities.

His first experience with that was as a freshman lawmaker, when lawmakers were considering passing a $300 million bond bill for the Institutions of Higher Learning.

“$290 million of that went to Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and USM,” he said. “They appropriated $9 million to three HBCUs. A Black legislator said to me this is more money than they’ve ever given to the three HBCUs.”

He said the amount was eventually increased to $30 million, but he was still shocked that Black leaders were pleased with such a small allocation.

“We begged for things for the universities – simple things like a fire station at Alcorn, a rural university. We appropriated $10 million to Ole Miss to study the Declaration of Independence, but we have not yet given $20 million to Mississippi Valley State University that has not had a new dorm [in years],” he said.

Johnson says he also was there for the settlement of the Ayers case.

As part of that settlement, the state was required to spend $503 million on Historically Black colleges and universities to address financial and enrollment disparities between Black colleges and majority-white colleges.

“The court determined a certain amount of money needed to be spent and certain enrollment metrics that needed to be met,” he said. “But most important was the money – it took forever for them to appropriate and spend the money the way it should be.”

Johnson told the court he wasn’t sure if the full $503 million had been spent as of Wednesday morning. He said the last number he saw put the spending at around $450 million.

Testimony got heated at times, when Johnson responded to questions from Philip Abernathy, an attorney for the state.

Abernathy corrected Johnson on claims he made that the bill was passed along racial lines, but party lines.

Johnson said that the vote on his amendment to require five of the nine JMAAA appointees to be Black was along racial lines, with even white Democrats voting against it.

Abernathy also asked whether Johnson thought other representatives were racist, including former Speaker Philip Gunn, who later voted along Johnson to change the state flag.

“When you come in and take an airport from a Black city and you don’t debate it, and the only factor you consider is that it’s a Black city, it seems like a racist vote to me,” Johnson said. “I got friends who are Republicans who took that vote and I tell them it’s a racist vote.”

As for 2162, Johnson said the state was interested in taking over the airport so it could have control of the land surrounding the East Metro Parkway.

[READ: ‘This case is about money’: Airport takeover trial begins]

The parkway runs east of the airport from Lakeland Drive to Highway 80 and opened up thousands of acres of land for development.

The airport owns about 1,100 acres along the parkway. Much of it remains undeveloped.

Even so, Johnson told the court that typically when the state makes such a “monumental decision” as taking over an airport, that there would be a committee debate and a PEER study.

PEER is the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance and Expenditure Review.

“You would have a PEER study – have a PEER committee look at it, have hearings in the summer determining whether you need to do something,” he said. “That didn’t happen with this.”

During questioning, attorneys for JMAA played Johnson’s speech opposing the bill from the floor of the House.

In it, Johnson questioned why the state wanted to take over the airport when it was doing well. He said if the state really wanted to help Jackson, it should take over the water, which the state didn’t want at the time.

Said Johnson, “It’s ironic how the state wants Jackson’s water now that it’s got $800 million. They didn’t want it when it was $400 million in the hole.”

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