Metro’s board of directors scrambled together an emergency meeting Thursday morning to approve a funding agreement with Virginia on dedicated funding for the transit agency.
With less than 24 hours public notice, they convened via conference call, rather than in person due to an urgent funding deadline fast approaching. But despite the short notice, they took the bold, yet some-would-say-necessary, step of making the meeting public, broadcasting the phone call over the Web and in a Metro meeting room.
(This was a change because in the past year alone they have held closed conference calls and had a private three-hour “recess for lunch” in which they discussed Metro’s budget, much to the consternation of reporters, riders and transit advocates.)
Yet, don’t get your spirits up, open government aficionados. The sunshine was let in only briefly Thursday.
Almost immediately after convening the meeting, the board went into executive session for about an hour and a half. It re-emerged for a quick meeting and approved the funding agreement without much discussion, other than some minor word tinkering.
Coincidentally, while Metro’s board was talking behind closed doors, others in a public meeting blocks away were discussing how to improve Metro’s governance.
A task force run by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and Greater Washington Board of Trade solicited public input for a study they are conducting on the the transit agency in the wake of months of turmoil, leadership shifts and deadly safety oversights.
At the meeting, more than a dozen people spoke out, while a dozen more submitted written comments in advance, said COG spokesman Lewis Miller. Comments submitted in writing can be read here.
