Posts about WMATA Governance

Brown, and his number two Mary Cheh, claimed this morning that the change is not vengeful but rather an attempt to better align committees with subject areas. Cheh oversees environmental issues, and she said Brown wants to reunite the environment with public works and transportation. All three were part of a single committee before 2008.

According to Wells, Brown offered the WMATA Board seat to Cheh as well, but she turned it down. If his goal really were to unite policy areas under one committee, he'd have pushed Cheh to either take the seat or not take the committee. Or, if his motive hadn't been payback, he could have just let Wells keep his seat.

Having oversight of planning could give Wells the opportunity to help OP move forward on its zoning rewrite and continue or even expand its good work on neighborhood plans around DC. But OP needs Wells' oversight far less than DDOT, WMATA, the Taxi Commission, and the other transportation agencies do.

And if unifying the Department of the Environment with transportation in a single committee makes sense, it would make even more sense to put it with planning and parks, both of which have a significant environmental impact as well. A Committee on Planning, the Environment, Parks and Recreation seems even more logical than a Committee on Public Works, the Environment, and Transportation.

It still seems evident that this move was motivated more by politics than common sense. That's why Tom Sherwood called Brown's justification for the transportation change "paper thin."

Wells and the other new members of the Board went through many days of orientation to learn the ins and outs of WMATA's operations, budget, policies and safety issues. In doing so, several have said they built up strong working relationships that can foster regional cooperation. Bowser will now have to learn the same material over from scratch, but without the camaraderie that Wells developed. Again, DC will lose momentum, expertise, and relationships, all because of Brown's pique.

Last year, the WMATA Board came under criticism for members acting parochially, which most everyone knew was code for Jim Graham (ward 1)'s penchant for favoring Ward 1 transportation projects. In the last budget, Bowser showed a very parochial attitude toward city programs, focusing entirely on her own ward. Will she do the same on the WMATA Board, pushing needed transportation enhancements for Ward 4 but at the expense of other parts of the city?

Bulger's son ran Brown's Ward 3 operation in his campaign for chair. The Council held roundtable on the nomination last week, but seems never to have posted it anywhere on the Council site; I have an automated system that monitors the calendar for changes, and the word "Bulger" didn't appear until Sunday when it popped up as part of today's Committee of the Whole agenda.

Bulger runs Government Relations, Inc., a federal lobbying firm, which used to lobby for Fairfax County (but does not today). Bulger also told me he was involved with pushing Congress to pass the current federal transit benefit.

It's pretty blatant, too. Brown isn't rearranging all the committees. He's just singling out Wells for punishment.

Wells will get the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation, generally considered the least desirable post one of the least desirable posts. Mary Cheh, who is still close to Brown and his number two as Chair Pro Tempore, will take over Public Works and Transportation as well as keeping the Department of the Environment. Muriel Bowser, who got Parks and Rec in January because of her support for Mayor Fenty, will get Government Operations.

Committees are rarely shifted mid-term, and only to take responsibilities away from a member facing scandal. This may be the first time in history a committee is taken away midway from a member for being honest.

Brown had the opportunity to alter committees because Harry Thomas, Jr. stepped down from the Committee on Econmic Development amid his own ethical problems. Brown moved economic development into the Committee of the Whole, under his direct control.

Vincent Orange (at-large) wanted Economic Development, but Brown didn't want to give it to him because of their rivalry in the race for chair (and, perhaps, because Orange has a poor track record on economic development).

Instead, Brown is proposing a new, smaller committee with only oversight of the Department of Small & Local Business Development and some other smaller agencies, and is keeping Economic Development in the Committee of the Whole.

Since Orange has no committee today, there's no need for any further reshuffling. But apparently Brown is still sore from the report.

Ironically, however, that report could have been the best thing for Brown. It got the issue fully into the spotlight, reducing the long drip of new scandal news. It put a fair amount of blame on the Department of Public Works as well as on Brown.

Had Brown embraced the report, apologized for his missteps, and pushed to fix policies around official vehicles for the future to stop such failures from recurring, he could have put the issue behind him.

Brown had many opportunities to start rebuilding the Council's reputation. Instead, he has continued to drag it into the gutter. He told colleagues that his own campaign finance scandals didn't go any deeper, and then they did.

The Council started the year with very high esteem among the populace, after a term of steady and effective leadership under Vincent Gray. Now, it's widely derided, and rightly so, with many of its members facing some ethical questions.

Now, he's even transferring the DC Council's voting seat on the WMATA Board. That's quite ironic. Last year, before becoming chair, Kwame Brown participated in a secretive committee to study WMATA governance, dominated by the Board of Trade. One of the better recommendations from that committee was to make board appointments based less on politics. Now, Brown is reassigning the post once again based solely on politics, and dirty personal ones at that.

By putting politics over progress, Brown is abandoning a commitment to make transportation better in DC. The people of Ward 7, where Brown himself lives, could suffer. Wells was making improving bus service east of the Anacostia a cornerstone of his chairmanship. He hosted listening sessions in wards 4, 5, 7, and 8, got WMATA to promise technological upgrades for Metrobuses east of the river, and pushed the east of the river Circulator even though it meant losing some service in Ward 6.

Cheh, on the other hand, complained in the budget that the Circulator is going east of the river but doesn't go to the Palisades. Was that just posturing for her ward, or will she really push for more transportation spending in Ward 3 over other parts of DC?

Cheh is one of the least bad alternatives to head transportation, but it'll break the forward momentum that's been built with Council working closely with DDOT. Wells' staff has a deep understanding of transportation issues, including some carried over from when Jim Graham ran the committee. That institutional memory will likely be lost.

Plus, as Brown's closest confidante on the Council, Cheh could have tried to talk him out of this move which clearly makes him look petty. Does she also think keeping Brown's scandals quiet is the top public policy goal for the Council? Or is she sore with Tommy Wells for stymieing her plan to pretend to support the bond tax in place of an income tax, but then try to get both out of the budget?

DDOT is at a crossroads. New Director Terry Bellamy, formerly Gabe Klein's deputy, could aggressively move to implement the ambitious Action Agenda that Klein put together, including pedestrian safety, bikeshare expansion, cycle tracks, bus priority lanes, real-time bus information, Circulator expansion, performance parking and more.

Or, Bellamy could let inertia win out, not making the tough calls and allowing projects to stagnate when the public isn't unified for or against them, as they usually aren't. Wells and his team were well situated to push DDOT to achieve its potential.

By taking Wells off the committee for transparently political reasons, Brown is showing that forward progress in the District isn't foremost in his mind. Instead, punishing those who don't cover up his own ethical failings is the priority. At least now, we know exactly what kind of man we have as Chairman.

The Council typically goes along with a chairman's committee choices, but they all have to vote on the recommendation this morning. Will this Council really stand by and let Brown do this? If they do, each member will be sending the message that it's appropriate to cover up a colleague's misdeeds.

What, then, should the public assume is behind each future decision the Council makes? Or the difficult decisions they do not make? Email Brown and the Council or call Brown's office at (202) 724-8032 to remind them that this unprecedented, vindictive move will further degrade the reputations of Brown, each member who votes aye, and that of the Council as a whole.

Update: Mary Cheh has sent me the following statement:

Kwame decided to reshuffle and make more coherent committee functions. And yesterday he told me of his plan to emphasize the environmental work in one committee, bringing back environment to public works and transportation (stormwater, recycling and waste management, transportation policy, pollution and vehicles, etc. brought together with environmental policy) and he offered the committee to me. I jumped at it and am very enthusiastic.

The argument about making committees more coherent makes little sense when he's also splitting up the traditional Economic Development functions into smaller committees to limit Vincent Orange. We all know why this one area is being singled out. I'm disappointed that Cheh is defending such an ethically suspect move.

A governance committee, ably led by Mary Hynes of Arlington, has formulated bylaws and procedures for the board which better define its role. This year, after most members turned over and the reports came out criticizing past board actions, the board has indeed started focusing effectively on the high-level decisions that it needs to make to keep Metro running smoothly.

The GAO report says, "These draft bylaws represent a good first step toward addressing some of the concerns discussed in this report but will need to be adopted and then effectively implemented to achieve their desired effect." The report also criticizes past boards for doing a poor job of strategic planning, suggesting the board develop a better plan and then commit to implementing it.

The executives and DOTs of DC, Maryland, and Virginia were waiting to see the GAO report before moving ahead further on structural changes. The Board of Trade report last year suggested removing alternates, giving the governors one extra appointment of their own, creating an added "super-board" above the current board to supervise the board, and changing the jurisdictional veto.

The Riders' Advisory Council, on the other hand, argued that these changes were unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. Its report argued that the problems could be fixed by doing a better job appointing members and by the members developing better policies around these issues. (Disclosure: I was the principal author of the RAC report.)

The GAO took a similar stance to the RAC's report. They wrote:

Our analysis, however, indicates that most of the recommended changes have trade-offs—there are both benefits and drawbacks to them. We compared the various recommendations to leading governance practices, approaches taken by other transit agencies, and the views of board members and stakeholders. Board members and stakeholders indicated that proposed changes to the board's structure and processes—such as eliminating alternate board members, changing the size of the board, or eliminating the jurisdictional veto—have trade-offs, and we did not find consistent support among leading governance practices or other transit agencies that these changes would improve governance.

The [Board of Trade/COG] Governance Task Force recommended that the signatories and the appointing authorities form a WMATA Governance Commission to make improvements to the authority's governance structure and hold the board accountable for its performance. ... Such a commission was viewed by some stakeholders we spoke with as redundant because it would be comprised of most of the same membership that is responsible for appointing the board of directors.

The GAO paid special attention to the federal government's involvement, which includes the General Services Administration appointing a set of federal members. The GAO says that GSA lacks clear procedures for selecting and appointing these members. The GSA replied that while it's true it doesn't have formal procedures, it doesn't think that's interfered with selecting qualified candidates.

Moving forward, this report confirms what's become increasingly clear: WMATA can be fixed without rearranging the organizational structure. Doing that could fix some problems but create others, and would ultimately be a distraction from the work of actually governing better.

Already, we've seen tremendous progress. The NTSB feels safety is improving. Communication has taken huge steps forward with WMATA now tweeting and generally using two-way communication. The board passed a budget that avoided service cuts and without any major acrimony. Local jurisdictions stepped up with needed funding.

Now, we should let the current board and management keep making the strides they have. The executives and DOTs should let this issue rest.

Governor McDonnell did succeed in using the frustration over Metro to let him take away some power from Northern Virginia, giving him a direct appointment to the board who will likely replace Mary Hynes entirely or move her to an alternate position and bump Jeff McKay. Either way, that will be a big loss for Virginian interests, since both have effectively represented their constituents. The legislature should reverse this hasty decision before the appointments are made or renewed at the end of the year.

If someone has been building these elements of infrastructure for 30 years, we could call them an "expert" on building that stuff. But should they alone decide what kind of towns we should build?

People are overwhelmingly saying, wait a minute, this isn't what we want. Housing prices in walkable areas like Logan Circle, Ballston, or Silver Spring are high and still rising because a lot of people want to live there but there isn't enough supply. We have lots of single-family, detached, suburban homes but not enough apartments and townhouses a short walk from shops, parks, and transit.

People are sending clear signals through their housing choices that they want walkable urbanism. Yet most (but not all) professionals working in the field are locked in to the ways they've been trained and the way they do things. That's where we get the crazy traffic engineer adherence to "standards" even when they make little sense, as this Strong Towns video so effectively parodied.

There's an important role for experts in identifying specific steps to implement a policy. Parochial political concerns become dangerous when making small-scale choices that can enrich indviduals, where the danger of corruption becomes strong. But when it comes to deciding the big picture, overarching directions, we need officials who listen to residents, not just make decisions based on how they've always done things.

The Washingtonian analogues of those experts are the ones Bob Chase and Rich Parsons consulted on their study that aimed to tell leaders what the regional transportation priorities should be (and coincidentally mirrored those priorities they were already pushing for). I spoke with Chase and Parsons last week, and they were adamant that they were just trying to find out the views of experts, devoid of politics.

They said they wanted "a pretty balanced, professional objective study about what works and what's not working well," to "take the local jurisdiction and state perspective out of it." In selecting their anonymous experts, they said they were "looking for people who take the politics out of it, and "intentionally selected people very senior, with 20 years of experience."

That doesn't change the fact that the questions guided people toward megaprojects, and that there's plenty of evidence the list had an exurban bias. Besides having a small number of people from DC, Chase and Parsons refused to tell me which counties the "experts" lived in.

But even had their sample been broader, there's a problem with saying that senior engineers should set transportation priorities. I'd definitely prefer an engineer with 20 years of experience to design a new road or transit line over someone who lacks a professional degree. I'd also prefer to have them tell me how much it will cost and what hydrological problems might arise.

I'd even welcome their input on where to put a line, but we shouldn't be setting priorities just on that basis. A transportation engineer is not responsible for thinking about the merits of different growth patterns, or their effect on people's health and happiness, or on the environmental costs.

Remember, Jane Jacobs got regular people to step up to stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway when the "experts" were saying it was necessary. All of the conventional wisdom in the urban planning field at the time held that the road was the only way to make New York work in the modern age.

Should decisionmakers disregard input from the 23-year-old college grad who has a job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers but doesn't want to live in Fairfax County because there aren't walkable places with an urban vibe? What about the 75-year-old in Aspen Hill who's finding it harder to drive, hates that she has to travel 30 minutes to the Pike just to get to most kinds of retail, and wishes she could live in Bethesda but prohibited by expensive housing?

The Board of Trade has been pushing WMATA and local jurisdictions to excise elected officials from any decisionmaking authority on the WMATA Board. Sure, it's the experts and not the elected officials who should decide which contractor is best suited to replacing the broken track circuits. But I want officials who listen to riders to decide whether to cut weekend service. By a strictly performance-based metric, that service is relatively poor at cost recovery, but its benefits to the region go far beyond WMATA itself.

Now, with their survey of anonymous "experts," Chase and Parsons are going to be pressuring groups like the Transportation Planning Board to abdicate their traditional role in setting priorities and instead choose the megaprojects their "experts" picked, which happen to be the same ones they were already pushing for.

They'll say, as they told me, that local officials are too preoccupied with the immediate interests of their local jurisdiction to think "regionally." Instead, decisions about how to spend billions in transportation dollars over decades should go to the professionals, who won't think about the big picture of regional growth but rather just move as many cars or trains as fast as possible as far as possible.

The TPB and other officials should reject this idea. The input of professionals is useful, but far more so when those professionals can attach their names to their recommendations and everyone can weigh them knowing the biases and interests each person brings with them. The input of other people is important too, and our elected representatives, even if imperfect, are the ones best situated to make those choices.

Instead, he continually insisted that he should get a seat on the WMATA Board because he contributes $50 million in matching funds. That's a tiny fraction of what Northern Virginia puts in, and his administration has refused to commit to keeping that going, even if Congress doesn't cut its own contribution.

But maybe it does make sense for the governor to have some involvement in Metro's governance. McDonnell could demonstrate that the request is more than a political power play on his part by speaking up for Metro and showing even a basic understanding of the challenges it faces. When asked about late-night closures, he said:

I think we've got to get the new General Manager in place first. I think we need to have the revisions in the the governance structure that we've all agreed to need to be taken place first and then let that team decide how to reduce funds and make the system operate more safely and more efficiently. But I wouldn't support it now until we've got the leadership changes made.

Someone should tell him that the new already General Manager is in place... and that the governance changes he himself is pushing includes changing the GM to a CEO.

McDonnell wants a voting seat on the Board, but his only response to most issues about problems facing Metro boils down to, "I won't lift a finger to do anything about this important agency until I get the power I want." He and his staff still haven't demonstrated any willingness to deal with Metro's problems or even much of an understanding of the details.

Why should Northern Virginia officials, who do work to solve these problems, do step up with funding, and do know what they're talking about, give up one of their seats for this?

A chief executive needn't know every specific detail about each agency, even one as important as Metro, but O'Malley and Gray both demonstrated a much better awareness.

Here's a complete transcript of the segment, which begins at 29:00 on WTOP's recording:

Fairfax Supervisor Cathy Hudgins, the current WMATA Board chair, came to Richmond to testify against the bill. She said that Northern Virginia governments are willing to give the state government some involvement in WMATA governance, but not at the expense of diminishing their own role. She asked the legislature to let the current process of discussion and negotiation within the WMATA Board and NVTC continue to a resolution.

None of the senators brought up the fact that Governor McDonnell has still sent no letter to Congress about the $150 million capital appropriation for needed repairs that's on the chopping block, but that's a great argument against writing it into law that he must get power over WMATA.

Chairman Charles Colgan (D-Manassas) was the only Democrat to support the bill; four of the five Republicans, none from Northern Virginia, also voted for it, and two were not present.

NVTC can still give a seat to Drake if they choose; the benefit of having NVTC decide to do it instead of the legislature mandating it is that NVTC could reverse course if the governor decides to cut back on the already-meager state financial support.

The Senate panel also killed the two "anti-livability" bills, which would essentially override regional transportation planning and enshrine six-Beltways booster Bob Chase's own transportation priorities into law.

They would have required VDOT to rank projects (HB1998) and prioritize funding (HB1999) based on just two factors: what moves traffic faster, and what aids evacuation in case of a disaster.

The evacuation argument is a common canard used to push road-building, but the fact is that no realistic amount of roads will let everyone in the DC region drive at the same time. As Senator Mary Margaret Whipple (D-Arlington) pointed out, DC's own disaster plans recognize that, and don't call for mass evacuation.

Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria representatives lobbied against HB1999, arguing that these transportation priorities should instead come from the existing processes through regional bodies that already make these decisions. The panel agreed on a party-line vote despite pressure from groups like the Price William Chamber of Commerce and the Apartment and Office Building Association.

Responding to questions from Senator Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania), Finance Committee staff judged that HB1998 would have cost up to $5 million, and so no senator even made a motion to pass that bill.

News out of the legislature wasn't as good for bicycling, as the House rejected a number of bicycle bills including one to give Charlottesville permission to put contraflow bicycle lanes on one-way streets where the traffic and police departments feel it's appropriate.

The bill to require passing cyclists with three feet of space also died, as did a number of bills to limit cell phone use while driving.

Sarles hasn't been that kind of strong and visible leader, and as interim GM, he hasn't tackled the big problems. He's been quiet, but has built up better relations with local officials and bodies like the NTSB. That's something Metro really needs. He's launched a good "vital signs" report to track progress, and set up a very specific checklist of issues he would tackle this year.

On the other hand, other than not having any crashes, he hasn't done much (or at least not much yet) to improve customer service, WMATA's notoriously poor relationship with the press or its secretive culture, or really engaged with riders or the public at all. His defense of a wrong-headed bag search program based on no data whatsoever is disappointing.

For another year or two, maybe what WMATA needs most is just for everything to be really stable. Many Board seats are turning over, which will bring in some great new blood but also lose some institutional memory. That could make this a relatively bad time to also bring in a brand-new GM.

In other words, if Sarles' leadership has been positive for one year, why not keep it going for another year or two?

The big question, once he doesn't have an immediate end date, is whether he will start to deal with these longer-term issues. WMATA needs to lead on bringing jurisdictional partners together to find some more sustainable revenue sources. The Board and GM/CEO need to attack the organizational culture.

There aren't many reasons to believe this will suddenly happen. His approach to safety has been too reactive and short-term, which has made the NTSB happy but leaves some issues unsolved. Devoting all resources to safety has also taken all money away from upgrading the infrastructure to handle more 8-car trains. Without that, Metro is already nearly at capacity on some lines, and overcrowding on platforms can cause its own safety problems.

Will we be dealing with other safety threats in a few years and look back baffled as to why the leadership of today didn't tackle them, just as people reacted to John Catoe not having done anything about failing track signals?

Perhaps fortunately, Sarles is not going to be GM for a long time. He was already at retirement when he came on board. He'll probably only stay for a few more years.

Rather than thinking of him as permanent General Manager, I'm going to consider him the longer-term interim GM, but not the CEO many have called for. An interim GM like him could be just what WMATA needs for a couple of years. However, the Board shouldn't completely stop thinking about how to find the real CEO who will truly lead WMATA where it has to go. In a couple of years, that'll again be their task.

Whoever Metro picks, it's important that they have the vision necessary to lead the agency into the next decade. A time likely to be marked by an increase in crowding, continued tight budgets, and the need to plan for new core infrastructure. But foremost, the new Manager must be someone who can change the culture at Metro.

The final vote will be by the full Board at their meeting on January 27. It is unclear when Metro will announce who has been selected.

The plan makes particular mention of a key element of the RAC report which BOT/COG glossed over: the importance of helping the WMATA Board focus on high-level policies and performance metrics instead of trying to get into the weeds of exactly how many cents SmarTrips should be allowed to go negative or which escalators seem to be out more often.

It also asks the working group to analyze one of the other major RAC recommendations, creating a better-defined public input process for board decisions.

Finally, the plan also puts off decisions on many of the specific BOT/COG proposals, some of which are sensible while others are unwise. The informal working group will evaluate those specifics over the next year and draft potential legislation to be introduced in the 2012 legislative session.

Unfortunately, this cuts Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax City, Loudoun, Montgomery and Prince George's local officials out of the decisions about which BOT/COG or RAC recommendations to implement. It's particularly problematic for the Northern Virginia counties and cities, who are the ones that pay for Metro.

The state government has long shown a reluctance to help fund transit in Northern Virginia, and Governor McDonnell's recent "great time to build roads" transportation plan continues in that tradition. Will NoVA governments have as much incentive to put up their own limited money when a Secretary of Transportation who's from another party and has political ambitions of his own is negotiating on their behalf?

DC and Maryland officials who deal with WMATA communicated a feeling that it's easier to work with one single state government than an association of local governments. Projects sometimes have to be split into more pieces so that Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria can participate, and some decisions take longer because the three need to coordinate and talk with the smaller cities as well.

However, this ignores the political realities. The DDOT and MDOT officials are prioritizing the convenience of doing their own jobs over the fact that Northern Virginia has a regional interest that Richmond lacks. If the state government wants to start contributing more meaningfully to Metro and make a long-term commitment, then it deserves more of a role in the governance.

During the RAC's deliberations, riders expressed appreciation for having local officials making decisions. Local officials are more responsive to riders and more directly aware of the actual issues on the ground versus just the theories. State DOTs, on the other hand, are notorious for being out of touch with residents, as this video so hilariously points out. MDOT and VDOT, especially VDOT, have not been exceptions. While I can see why state DOT officials would find it appealing to make WMATA more like a state DOT, other officials and riders should view this effort with skepticism.

If the Northern Virginia governments had actually been the problem with Metro, there would be sense in suggesting a more centralized decisionmaking structure, but if anything they have been some of the best board members and the strongest advocates for a good system. Their localities have also done the most to merge land use and transportation planning, in Arlington's case for decades, and with Fairfax making it a priority with the more recent Tysons plans.

On another note, while the writers of the report acknowledge the Riders' Advisory Council report as well as the Board of Trade/COG task force report, the appendix only lists three bullet points where the RAC report makes recommendations not in the BOT/COG report. It omits the rest of the letter that was taken from, which also lists the areas the RAC disagrees with BOT/COG.

That could be misleading, and the RAC is putting out a press advisory to clarify the situation. It seems unprofessional to excerpt the letter in this way. If the authors didn't want to call attention to the opposition to some ideas, the report could easily instead have simply listed the original list of recommendations (PDF, page 7) from the actual RAC report, like it listed the Board of Trade recommendations.

The WMATA Board is already changing. At least 6 of its 14 members will be new this year, and likely several more as well. The new board has a great opportunity to start governing well. If they succeed, perhaps all of these changes to appointment procedures and the like will be unnecessary. If so, the question will be whether the Secretaries of Transportation can put their own political interests aside and avoid pushing for too many "reforms."