Maryland, Virginia and D.C.’s top leaders plan to seek legislation in the coming year to make sure that the people serving on Metro’s board have specific qualifications, attend transit agency meetings and actually ride the system.
A task force convened by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray issued final recommendations Tuesday on how to improve the governance of the transit agency. The group was formed nearly a year ago after multiple critical reports honed in on the agency’s board of directors.
But the latest recommendations are not as dramatic as initially expected. They do not call for immediate amendments to the compact that established Metro, such as changing the size of the 16-seat board or giving some teeth to the independent oversight group charged with monitoring the agency.
Such bigger structural changes likely will come later, said Jim Dyke, a prominent lawyer who helped lead the push for the reforms and has since been chosen by McDonnell to represent Virginia on Metro. “They want to make sure there is full discussion of possible compact changes,” he said.
Metro’s board has been working on reforming itself, creating bylaws this summer. But the task force calls on Metro’s board to make some additional changes, including making committees smaller and reducing the number of meetings and closed-door executive sessions. It asks the board to create ways of measuring its own performance, something the board is working on.
And it calls for a yearly summit with Metro and state leaders — slated next year for Jan. 13 — to assess their progress.
In the coming year, the governors and mayor plan to seek legislation creating term limits of no more than two consecutive four-year terms. They also want to require board members to have experience in transit, engineering, finance, public safety, human resources or law, among other fields.
Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said that while some of the recommendations are good, the requirement for specific qualifications worries him.
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“We remain concerned that the state of Virginia and the Greater Washington Board of Trade continue to push their goal of ousting local officials from the board,” he said.
Local officials are more accountable and responsive to the public, he said, and make decisions about local budgets and land use, which are both key to Metro.
The report is a culmination of more than two years of critiques aimed at Metro since the deadly June 2009 train crash. Congressional committees, the Federal Transit Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and Washington Council of Governments, plus Metro’s own Riders’ Advisory Council, have all weighed in on how the agency needed to be reformed.
Under all the fire, Metro has seen massive turnover. First, much of the executive leadership team was pushed out, then General Manager John Catoe stepped down. Next came the board. In January, only three members who were on the board during the crash will remain among the 14 occupied seats — all others were pushed out or jumped off the plank themselves.
