Why are boards of directors always the last to know and act?
For example: When the board of trustees at the University of the District of Columbia renewed the contract of then-President William Pollard, faculty and students knew he was no leader to celebrate. The board reached that conclusion months later and forced his resignation — but not before it used university funds to buy out his contract.
What about the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s board? When will it fire General Manager John B. Catoe Jr.?
“Mr. Catoe acquitted himself very ably during the days following the [June 22] accident. And every day since,” WMATA board chairman and D.C. Councilman Jim Graham said in an e-mail to me last week. He acknowledged the months since the fatal crash “have been the toughest by any standard. [But] this was also the year in which John Catoe was given the singular honor of being named General Manager of the Year by the American Public Transit Association.”
That’s what he said, really. I don’t make this stuff up.
Graham also said Metro’s pending receipt of $300 million — $150 million from the federal government and $50 million from each of the three local jurisdictions — was a “substantial achievement” this year. (Former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., deserves credit for that. He pushed for the federal appropriation and brokered the agreement among local governments.
Shifting focus, Graham added that Metro still hadn’t received the “probable cause” finding for the summer collision from the National Transportation Safety Board. Consequently, the agency is considering its 2011 budget without knowing what it will need to fix.
Graham and other board members have smoke in their eyes. Catoe has been burning aides. He fired his deputy general manager and chief of bus services. Three others were demoted. His actions came after Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., assailed Metro. She argued for a more vigorous and aggressive form of management.
The only thing Catoe and Graham do aggressively is cover their rear ends; they’d disagree with me, of course.
Both told reporters management changes were in the works before Mikulski’s rant. Why, then, weren’t they announced sooner? Why wasn’t anyone fired after the summer crash, and after workers were injured or killed? Drivers were terminated for cell phone use, after all, and last week the operator who rammed into a parked train in a Northern Virginia rail yard was fired.
The person whose job should be on the line is the man at the top — the one who should have better evaluated the effectiveness of his staff; who should have understood the operations problems in his organization; and who should have declared, before Mikulski’s tongue lashing, his so-called “war on safety.”
But, instead of putting Catoe on probation after the June accident in which nine people were killed, the board renewed his contract. If past is prologue, watch out. Taxpayers soon may be forced to cover the buyout tab for yet another inept manager who stayed too long.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
