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As Union Station undergoes 10 months of repairs following the Aug. 23 earthquake, two members of Congress are calling for what they say is the first-ever federal audit of the station’s Redevelopment Corporation. District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Rep. Nick Rahall, D.-W.Va., are asking the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General to investigate Union Station’s management and finances as the station prepares to undergo major changes in addition to repairing earthquake damage – including expanded Metrorail access and renovations in Columbus Circle.
Norton says she became concerned about Union Station during a series of congressional hearings between 2008 and 2010. Those hearings, the first of their kind, revealed that Union Station didn’t have a master plan to coordinate renovations and expansions, she said. The station’s financial status, she said, was also unclear.
“What was perhaps clearest [in the hearings] was what we did not know about Union Station and its development corporation,” she said. “The large changes underway at Union Station make us want to know about management as well as its finances – can it manage these changes?”
The Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, a non-profit created by the federal government to help redevelop Union Station in the 1980s, releases financial statements every year. But Norton wants more, specifically a full-fledged audit of the station’s finances, which would allow Congress to “protect the significant federal investment” in the station, she wrote in a letter to the Department of Transportation.
“Truly, it is preposterous to think there’s a great big question mark around a federal facility like this,” she said.
A DOT spokesman said he hadn’t heard of the request from Norton and Rahall and couldn’t comment on the proposed audit. Union Station representatives did not return a call for comment.
