Serious fixes for WMATA, part 4: Act regionally as a group

Do you have opinions on WMATA governance? Come talk about it at a public meeting tonight, 7 pm at WMATA HQ, 600 5th Street, NW. Also, the Board of Trade and MWCOG will release their report on WMATA governance this morning. It should be interesting to see what the group, co-chaired by DC Council Chair-elect Kwame Brown, has signed on to.

Continuing our discussion of the RAC report on WMATA governance, we already identified attendance and ridership, focusing on policy, and creating a CEO.

Another part of improving governance is to get the Board to act more as a group, and to think regionally. The RAC concluded that staff should wait for formal Board action to change its policies or recommendations instead of responding to individual members’ requests, should drop the automatic rotation of chairs among the jurisdictions, and keep the jurisdictional veto.

Kate Hanley, a former WMATA Board member from Fairfax County and former member of the County Board of Supervisors, relayed a story that really resonated with the RAC committee. She said that when she first was elected to the school board, the general counsel sat them down and explained that individually, they have no authority. Together, they set policy for the school, but they should not expect to make anyone in the school system do anything just based on their individual say-so.

There have been many occasions where WMATA Board members have individually asked staff to change policy in private meetings. They are free to express opinions, but staff should not feel an obligation to comply with those requests unless they agree with the points made. In other words, they should treat a private request from one member similarly to a private request from any other rider whose opinion they respect.

If the Board votes to direct the staff, of course, then they should comply without question.

The same goes for individual comments in committee meetings. If one member expresses an opinion, or even suggests they might veto a measure unless it’s changed, the staff (under the competent and strong leadership of a good CEO) should take the comments into consideration, but stick to their recommendation until they either become convinced they were wrong based on persuasive feedback, or until a full Board vote sets a contrary policy.

The Board can help clarify this relationship by adding this to their procedures and asking the General Counsel to emphasize this issue to new members, as the Fairfax school board’s general counsel did for Hanley years ago.

In addition, the RAC committee suggests removing the automatic rotation of chairs. Today, the Board elects a new chair each year, but that election is always a formality. They simply rotate to the next member in line, giving each jurisdiction a turn once every three years and each voting member a turn once every six.

That chair can even be brand new. When Elizabeth Hewlett replaced Charles Deegan, Deegan had recently taken over as chair. Hewlett simply became the chair. This isn’t to say that Hewlett did a bad job, but the chairmanship of the Board should probably have gone to a more experienced member.

In particular, it should go to someone who commands the respect of the members from all jurisdictions. If the Board stopped automatically rotating and simply elected one member in a more competitive election, it’s likely that person would think more regionally as well as about his or her own jurisdiction.

Also, the Board should try to reelect its chair, assuming the chair is doing a good job, for more than one year. That would provide continuity of leadership, more stability in terms of the Board’s relationship with staff, and less rapid change in the chairs and composition of committees.

Finally, the RAC spent a great deal of time discussing the veto. According to the WMATA compact, for any action to pass, at least one member from each of DC, Maryland, and Virginia must vote for it. If both Virginia voting members say no, it doesn’t pass, for example.

This has created gridlock at times, and many people have criticized it. The COG/BOT report will probably address this issue in some way, though we don’t know how.

Should the veto be eliminated? Our committee decided no.

The biggest reason is that it’s simply not going to happen. Each of the three jurisdictions contributes substantial money to WMATA, and therefore needs certain assurances. Basically, in the 1960s the three jurisdictions made a deal. They’d work together and put in money into a regional system they don’t entirely control, but they’d get this assurance that no two would gang up on the other one.

For example, there is a complex formula which allocates expenses among the jurisdictions. On Metrorail, costs get divided into three pieces: the jurisdiction’s population, its number of stations, and its average ridership. There are many unfair elements to this formula, which variously act against any individual jurisdiction. Without a veto, two of them could change the formula to the detriment of the third.

DC, in particular, often ends up being the odd jurisdiction out. Most Virginia and Maryland riders are commuters, while DC has many more riders who use the system like an urban subway. Most Virgnia and Maryland trips are longer than DC resident trips. Virginia and Maryland have many large parking garages while DC has few. DC has far more bus lines and walkers and bicyclists.

Would it be possible to restrict the veto to only financial matters, for instance? Possibly, but it’s hard to know what really bears on a jurisdiction’s financial interest. Is development around a station a financial issue? What about SmarTrips? Bus service patterns?

Matt Watson, a former DC alternate member, noted in one of the sessions that DC actually vetoed the “Green Line Commuter Shortcut” for a period of time. That was a service pattern where inbound trains from Greenbelt used the switch at Fort Totten to get onto the Red Line and continue to Farragut North, while the inner Green Line was still under construction.

At that time, everyone had realized that the system cost more to build and operate than originally envisioned. There was talk about cutting the system back. Since the inner Green Line was one of the last pieces, DC was worried that the others would cut that piece while keeping their own. Therefore, DC refused to allow the Maryland trains to use the Red Line, which was nice for northern Prince George’s commuters, until they had set up contracts to build the inner Green Line, assuring its completion.

Many Board members also explained how they don’t see the veto as that much of an obstacle. Certainly it forces them to work out an agreement all three jurisdictions can support, but that’s not a bad thing. After all, this is a complex three-state operation. On important issues, it should move forward in a way that all three support.

This gets to one of the canards of WMATA governance. WMATA gets substantial criticism for the way Board members haggle between themselves. Why can’t the Board simply make efficient, consensus decisions all the time, some seem to ask? Why can’t it be like a corporate Board in this way?

But corporate boards do not have three states’ interests which they have to balance. They all have one single interest. Many other transit agencies’ boards are all appointed by one governor. Of course they don’t argue as much; they are all serving one master.

The WMATA Board is fractious not because of the members on it but because of its role. It is balancing three disparate interests. Most of the time, after all the debating, the outcome that emerges is generally a good one for the region. It’s one all jurisdictions can get behind. In that respect, at least, it works. It might be messy, but it works.

Continuing in this vein, next time we will discuss why the Board should indeed continue to include elected officials.