With the stroke of a signature, the fight is over.
Officials from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission signed a key document Monday morning, effectively giving up a more than year-long fight with the Virginia governor over representation on the Metro board.
The governor’s appointee, Jim Dyke, is expected to take a seat on the 16-slot Metro board of directors come January.
And the state says it will now release more than $20 million that it withheld during the impasse from Northern Virginia transit agencies such as the Virginia Railway Express commuter train.
The state received a PDF of the signed document and is awaiting hard copies in the mail, Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation spokeswoman Courtney Moyer confirmed on Monday. The money should be released no later than the end of the week, she said.
Need a recap on the previous rounds of the boxing match?
Last year, Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell unsuccessfully threatened to withhold $50 million in state funding unless his office got to appoint two seats on the board.
Then he tacked a last-minute amendment onto the state budget giving him one voting seat on Metro’s board, but NVTC members said the move violated the legal documents governing Metro.
The state then asked the NVTC and other transit agencies to sign an agreement giving the state a potential seat on any oversight board of public transit providers receiving state money. When the NVTC didn’t sign the agreement this summer, fearing it would violate other rules governing Metro, the state withheld the money it gives to the NVTC to disburse to agencies such as VRE, the Fairfax Connector and Metro. The two sides forged a compromise agreement last week, clarifying the state only wanted one seat, not two on the Metro board.
Still unanswered: Who will lose their spot to make way for Dyke.
