Nathaniel Ford was the top candidate to become chief executive of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority despite a contentious and flawed vetting process in which the authority’s board learned belatedly about Ford’s personal financial problems and one authority member accused those opposing Ford of being racists. Despite those problems, the MWAA, which oversees the Washington area’s two airports and the Dulles Toll Road, still considers Ford, current head of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a candidate for the top job even as it reopens its search for someone to fill the position, a Virginia House of Delegates committee was told Thursday.
The authority’s handling of the executive search was roundly criticized by transportation committee members, and the MWAA board was called to appear before the committee to explain the lack of transparency in the search process and its failure to fully vet candidates before picking favorites.
Former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia appointee to the MWAA Board of Directors who represented the authority in front of the transportation committee, acknowledged that the board interviewed candidates for the job before those candidates were vetted.
The board was scheduled to choose a new executive on Wednesday but postponed the vote because three new directors had been named to the authority and had not had a say in the hiring.
“We felt that if the new CEO is going to have to work with these new members as well, we should kind of reopen this thing, take a step back and allow everybody to get comfortable,” Davis said.
No deadline was set for the board to choose a chief executive.
The 13-member board was split over Ford, who, according to Davis, was an engaging, charismatic candidate who charmed some directors during his interviews. Others were concerned over reports of Ford’s personal financial woes, including back taxes he owed and his use of corporate credit cards. And stories surfaced that at least one board member accused other directors of racism for declining to back Ford during an informal 7-6 vote.
“It wasn’t very pretty sitting there, and it’s even uglier when you read it in the paper,” Davis said. “We are looking and trying to make sure now that it’s not a 7-6 vote, that there will be a supermajority on the board for a position like this.”
Committee Chairman Joe May, R-Leesburg, suggested that MWAA’s governing body may be in over its head now that the authority is responsible not only for the region’s two airports, Washington Dulles International and Ronald Reagan Washington National, but the construction of the $6.5 billion extension of Metrorail to Dulles.
“That raises the expectation level of the people that do the governing,” May said. “The real issue is the governance model, which has served since 1986, is no longer an adequate model for today.”
