A Quarter Of Metro's Board Would Get A Makeover Under Senate Legislation
The management of the D.C. region’s transit authority has felt an avalanche of criticism in a year of commuting calamities and safety lapses, but until now, relatively little anger had reached Metro’s governing body — its 16-member board of directors.
Demands for reform are now shifting to the board in the form of legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate, co-sponsored by the Washington, D.C., region’s Senate delegation.
The legislation would remove the authority to make the federal appointments to Metro’s board from the General Services Administration (GSA) and place it with the secretary of Transportation. Each of Metro’s four jurisdictions – D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and the federal government — appoints four representatives.
“These appointees for this premier public transit system in the nation's capital should be people of superb transportation background,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in an interview with WAMU 88.5.
The bill, introduced Sept. 29 by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), was approved by a Senate committee on Oct. 7.
“I just think the secretary of the [Department of Transportation] is in a much better position to put people in place who understand the transportation issues and especially some of the safety issues where Metro has had a real challenge,” Kaine said.
The current four federal appointees are board Chairman Mort Downey, Harriet Tregoning, Anthony Giancola and Anthony Costa.
Only Downey has direct transit experience, having held top positions with the MTA in New York and the DOT during the Carter and Clinton administrations. Downey, who became the first federal appointee in 2010, is facing an ethics complaint filed by the D.C. inspector general. It alleges that he violated conflict-of-interest rules through his work as a consultant for Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm that has managed Metro’s capital improvements program, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Tregoning leads an office within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and was a top advocate for “smart growth” strategies during her tenure atop D.C.’s Office of Planning. Giancola’s background is in engineering. Costa is a senior adviser to the GSA administrator.
The original argument against DOT
When the GSA was given the appointment power a decade ago, legislators decided it should be kept out of the DOT. The notion prevailed that the agency responsible for funding and overseeing Metro should not appoint board members to the transit authority, because it would be viewed as a conflict of interest.
“There was concern raised in Congress and other places whether DOT would have a conflict of interest given the fact they are the regulator of Metro as well as a grant funder of Metro,” said Dan Tangherlini, the former GSA Administrator who appointed Tregoning and Costa to the Metro board.
“The concern was that it would be very hard for an agency that had representatives on the [Metro] board, who were therefore in charge of the policy, funding determinations, and direction of Metro, to…ultimately judge the wisdom of those decisions. You can see how that could create some tension,” Tangherlini said.
Any such concerns are long gone. Both the DOT and GSA support the change, Sen. Kaine said.
“When the federal agencies that are involved in this both say this would be an improvement, I don’t think it will be controversial,” Kaine said. “This clearly is a good management move.”
Allowing the DOT to name the federal appointees could ensure the agency’s policies are prioritized within Metro. For instance, Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx repeatedly has stated Metro must focus of safety and a state of good repair. In recent years, however, Metro also has been focused on expansion, namely the opening of the Silver Line to Tysons Corner and Reston.
“Safety needs to be paramount,” said Kaine. “Systems all over the country deal with balancing safety and expansion issues. This is not a novel issue for a transit system. I think it’s just frankly been the case that Metro has not balanced them very well.”