PR for People Monthly MAY 2017 | Page 27

Richard Ayres is one of the founders of the Natural Resources Defense Council.  He now heads his own law firm, Ayres Law Group, LLP.  Dick is the first and only lawyer to shut down a nuclear power plant in the US (San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, San Diego].  He is an exciting person and kind of a Washington DC insider.  And he paints watercolors. “

Richard Ayres is one of the nation’s most knowledgeable and well-respected environmental attorneys. He has shaped the Clean Air Act and its implementation in the regulatory process and before the federal courts and Congress since 1970. Consequently, he has an extraordinary understanding of the law and the EPA and Congressional policy processes and working relationships with many environmental policy makers in both public and private sectors.

Submitted by Attorney Ron Schiffman

My favorite lawyer is Kent S. Jackson, an aviation attorney at Jackson, Wade & Blanck, with offices in Kansas City and Washington, D.C.  Kent also authors the aviation legal column, “Point of Law”, in Business & Commercial Aviation, the monthly magazine and aviation professional journal for which I also write.  An accomplished pilot, Kent flies his own airplane, a high-performance Lancair that he built from a kit.  A native Kansan, he’s an expert on Kansas history and willing to talk about it at the drop of a cowboy hat.

I like Kent because he’s smart and quick-minded, possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the Federal Aviation Regulations and the patience to explain them to a bureaucratese-challenged dolt like me when I have to understand a regulatory point for an article I’m authoring.  (In fact, he has co-authored a three-volume guide titled Federal Aviation Regulations Explained published by Jeppesen and updated periodically.)  

I also like Kent because he’s a liberal-minded person with a cutting-edge sense of humor, a good man to have around in these stressful times.  I once had the opportunity to observe him during a hotly debated FAA workshop addressing the proposed expansion of a critical operational safety rule and appreciated the way he was able to express the point of view of pilots and charter operators with clarity and humor, defusing the tension that pervaded through an audience of several hundred government and aviation stakeholders in the room.  I see him as a positive force in today’s world.

Submitted by David Esler, Features and International Operations Editor, Business & Commercial Aviation

Washington D.C.

Kansas City, Kansas